COPYRIGHT

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in 1994

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Copyright © Barbara Erskine 2016

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Cover photographs © Jill Battaglia/Arcangel Images (beach); Craig Joiner/Arcangel Images (sand dunes); Shutterstock.com (woman)

Barbara Erskine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007280773

Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780007320929

Version: 2017-09-07

DEDICATION

For A.J.

who thought of the title

EPIGRAPH

‘Where’er we tread ’tis haunted, holy ground’.

Byron

‘C’était pendant l’horreur d’une profonde nuit …’

Racine

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXX

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXXII

Chapter XXXIII

Chapter XXXIV

Chapter XXXV

Chapter XXXVI

Chapter XXXVII

Chapter XXXVIII

Chapter XXXIX

Chapter XL

Chapter XLI

Chapter XLII

Chapter XLIII

Chapter XLIV

Chapter XLV

Chapter XLVI

Chapter XLVII

Chapter XLVIII

Chapter XLIX

Chapter L

Chapter LI

Chapter LII

Chapter LIII

Chapter LIV

Chapter LV

Chapter LVI

Chapter LVII

Chapter LVIII

Chapter LIX

Chapter LX

Chapter LXI

Chapter LXII

Chapter LXIII

Chapter LXIV

Chapter LXV

Chapter LXVI

Chapter LXVII

Chapter LXVIII

Chapter LXIX

Chapter LXX

Chapter LXXI

Chapter LXXII

Chapter LXXIII

Chapter LXXIV

Chapter LXXV

Chapter LXXVI

Author’s Note

Keep Reading Barbara Erskine’s Novels

Keep Reading Sleeper’s Castle

About the Author

Also by Barbara Erskine

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Her hair was the colour of newly frosted beech leaves; glossy; rich; tumbling from its combs as he pulled her against him, his lips seeking hers. His skin was tanned by the sun and the wind, hers, naked against him, white as the purest marble.

The heavy, twisted silver of the torc he wore about his arm cut into her flesh. She did not notice. She noticed nothing but the feel of his body on hers, the strength of his muscular thighs, the power of his tongue as he thrust it into her mouth as though he would devour her utterly.

‘Claudia …’

He breathed her name as a caress, a plea, a cry of anguish, and then at last a shout of triumph as he lay still, shaking, in her arms.

She smiled. Gazing up at the sky through the canopy of rustling oak leaves she was utterly content. The world had contracted into the one small clearing in the deserted woodland. Child and husband were forgotten. For this man in her arms, she was prepared to risk losing both; to risk losing her home, her position, life itself.

He stirred, and, raising himself onto his elbows, he stared down at her, his face strangely blank, his silvery eyes unseeing.

‘Claudia …’ he whispered again. He rested his face between her breasts. It was the little death; the death a man sought; the death which followed coition. He smiled, reaching his fist into her hair, holding her prisoner, tracing the line of her cheek-bones, her eyelids, with his lips. What would this woman’s husband, a son of Rome, an officer of the legion, say if he ever found out? What would he do if he learned his wife had a lover, and that the lover was a Druid Prince?

I

‘I hate being famous!’ Kate Kennedy confessed as she sat on the floor of her sister Anne’s flat. They were sharing a takeaway with a large Burmese cat called Carl Gustav Jung.

When her biography of Jane Austen was published Kate had found herself a celebrity overnight. She was invited onto talk shows, she was interviewed by three national daily newspapers and two Sundays, she toured the libraries and bookshops of Britain and she met Jon Bevan, described by the Guardian as one of England’s most brilliant young literary novelists and poets. The reason for all this interest? What the Times Literary Supplement called her ‘sizzling exposé’ of Jane’s hidden sensuality; her repressed sexuality; the passion in those well-loved, measured paragraphs.

Three weeks after meeting Jon she moved into his Kensington flat and her life changed forever.

Her elder sister and former flatmate, Anne, had remained philosophical about being deserted. (‘My dear, it was bound to happen to one of us sooner or later.’) Herself a writer – a Jungian psychologist whose library, especially the Freudian bits, Kate had ransacked when writing Jane – she had watched with amusement as Kate coped with fame. And found it wanting.

‘If you hate it so much, bow out. Become a recluse. Decline to appear, my dear. Cultivate a certain boorishness. And wear a veil.’ Anne licked soy sauce off her fingers. ‘Your sales would double overnight.’

‘Cynic.’ Kate smiled at her fondly. ‘Jon says I’m mad. He loves it, of course.’

‘I can see Jon giving up writing in the end to become a media person,’ Anne said thoughtfully. She wiped her hands on a paper napkin stamped with Chinese characters and, wrapping her arms around her legs, rested her chin thoughtfully on her knees. ‘He’s bad for you, you know, Kate. He’s a psychic vampire.’ She grinned. ‘He’s feeding off your creative energy.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘It’s true. You’ve slipped into the role of housewife and ego masseuse without even realising it. You’re besotted with him! It’s months since you got back from Italy, but you haven’t even started writing the new book yet.’

Startled by the vehemence of the statement Kate was astonished to find that she felt guilty. ‘I’m still researching.’

‘What? Love?’ Anne smiled. ‘And does Jon still think you’re mad to write about Byron at all?’

Kate nodded fondly. ‘Yes, he still thinks I’m mad. He thinks Byron is too well known. He thinks I should have plumped for someone obscure – and not so attractive,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘But I’m glad to say my editor doesn’t agree with him. She can’t wait for the book.’ She shook her head wearily, giving Carl Gustav the last, carefully-saved prawn. She had been secretly pleased and not a little flattered to find that Jon was jealous.

‘Is that why you chose Byron? Because he’s attractive?’ Anne probed further.

‘That and because I love his poetry, I adore Italy and he’s given me a chance to spend wonderful months travelling round Europe to all the places he lived.’ Kate gathered up the empty cartons from their meal. ‘And he was a genuinely fascinating man. Charismatic.’ She was watching Carl Gustav who, having crunched his prawn with great delicacy, was now meticulously washing his face and paws. ‘Actually, I am ready to start writing now. My notes are complete – at least for the first section.’

Anne shook her head. ‘I suppose I can think of worse ways of earning a living!’ She stood up and went to rummage in the fridge for a jar of coffee beans. ‘Tell me, are you and Jon still happy?’ she asked over her shoulder. ‘Really happy.’

Kate nodded.

‘Getting-married happy?’

‘No.’ Thoughtfully. Then, more adamantly, ‘No, I don’t think either of us are the marrying type. At least not at the moment.’

‘But you can see yourself living with him for a long time.’

There was a moment’s silence as Kate regarded her sister with preoccupied concentration. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’ve been offered a job in Edinburgh. If I take it I’ll have to give up the flat.’

‘I see.’ Kate was silent for a moment. So, it was burning bridges time. ‘What about Carl Gustav?’

‘Oh, he’ll come with me. I’ve discussed it with him at great length.’ Anne bent down and caressed the cat lovingly. He had always been more hers than Kate’s. ‘He’s quite pro-Edinburgh, actually, aren’t you, C.J?’

‘And he approves of the job?’

‘It’s a good one. At the University. A big step up that dreadful ladder we are all supposed to mount unceasingly.’

Kate turned away, astonished by the pang of misery that had swept through her at the thought of losing Anne. ‘Have you told Mum and Dad about this?’ she said after a minute.

Anne nodded. ‘They approve and I can see them just as often from Edinburgh. It’s not as though it’s the end of the world, Kate. It’s only four hundred miles.’

Kate smiled. ‘Well, if C.J. approves, and Mum and Dad approve, it must be OK. Get rid of the flat with my blessing and I’ll try and hang on to Jon for a bit!’

But she didn’t.

It was sod’s law, she supposed, that the day after Anne moved into her new flat in Royal Circus she and Jon had their first serious row. About money. Hers.

‘How much are they going to pay you?’ He stared at her in astonishment.

She pushed the letter over to him. He read it slowly. ‘It’s an American contract! You must have known about this for months.’ He was hurt and accusing.

‘I didn’t want to tell you until it was definite. You know how long these things take –’ She had saved the news as a surprise. She had thought he would be pleased.

‘Christ! It’s iniquitous!’ Suddenly he was on his feet. ‘I get paid a paltry few hundred dollars’ advance for my last book of poetry and you –’ he spluttered with indignation, – ‘you, get that!’ He threw the letter down.

She stared at him, shocked. ‘Jon –’

‘Well, Kate. Be realistic. You write bloody well, but it’s hardly literature!’

‘Whereas your books are?’

‘I don’t think anyone would dispute that.’

‘No. I’m sure they wouldn’t.’ She took a deep breath.

‘Oh, hey, come on.’ Suddenly he realised how much he had hurt her. Silently he cursed his flash-point temper. He put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Look, you know me. All mouth. I didn’t mean it. You are bloody good. You do enough research! Take no notice. I was just miffed. No, let’s face it, jealous.’ He gave her a hug. ‘I might even go so far as to swallow my pride and borrow some of that money off you.’

It was the first time she had heard even a hint of his financial problems.

He managed it by making her feel guilty. She saw that later. It was a subtle manipulation; a masterpiece of manoeuvring. She pushed the money at him; threw it at him; gave it to him and lent it to him, with every cheque tacitly apologising that she made money while he did not. When the end came she had less than a thousand left in the bank and no prospect, though he had promised faithfully to repay her, of any more until her next royalty cheque in the summer.

Even so, it was not the increasing pressure over money which came between them in the end. It was something sudden and quite unexpected.

It was a cold, miserable day in early December when Jon found her in the Manuscript Gallery of the British Museum standing looking down at the flat glass case where an open book stared up at her, Byron’s crabbed, slanting hand, much crossed out, flowing across the page of the dedication to ‘Don Juan’. The atmosphere of the gallery, the air conditioning, the strange false light with its muted hum were giving her a headache. She had been concentrating too long and the unexpected tap on her shoulder had given her such a fright she let out a small cry before she turned and saw who it was and remembered Jon had said he would meet her for a quick coffee.

The restaurant was, as usual, packed and as they sat down at a table near the wall she had no idea that this would lead to the outbreak of war. A couple of Japanese tourists, hung with cameras, inserted themselves, with bows and apologetic smiles, into the two spare chairs next to them. Coffee slopped into Jon’s saucer. A tall man, his own legs had folded with difficulty beneath the table as he pushed himself into the corner opposite Kate. His tray balanced in one hand, a letter in the other, his long, lanky frame and floppy hair lent him an air of languid elegance, something to which one look at the keen darting of his eyes as he stared around the room immediately gave the lie.

Still thinking about Byron, she had not immediately sensed his excitement. ‘You’re coming with me, Kate!’ He picked up the letter which he had put on the table between them and waved it at her. There was a gleam of triumph in his eyes.

‘Coming with you? To the States?’ Giving him her full attention at last, Kate looked at him in surprise. ‘I can’t.’

The expression of baffled anger which for a moment showed in his face confirmed her sudden suspicion that he was not going to understand.

‘Why?’ He was hurt and astonished by her response. He had thought she would be as excited as he was. He scowled. Why was it that she never reacted the way he expected? ‘This is the most important time of my life, Kate. My new novel being published in the States. A lecture tour. Publicity. Perhaps real money at last. Isn’t that what you want for me?’

‘You know it is.’ Her tone lost its defensiveness. She regarded him fondly. ‘I’m terribly pleased for you. It’s wonderful. The trouble is I am writing a book too, if you remember. And I can’t just swan off on a tour at the moment. My research is complete. My notes are ready. I am about to start writing. You know I can’t go with you. It’s out of the question.’

‘For God’s sake, Kate, you can start the book any time.’ Jon flung the letter down. He had counted on her; he could not visualise himself without her. ‘I’m not asking you to give it up. I’m not asking you for a vast amount of time. We would be in the States less than a couple of weeks.’

Kate glanced at the Japanese woman sitting opposite her. Her eyes tactfully lowered, the woman was unwrapping a vast multi-layered sandwich, from which tranches of ham and cheese and various highly-coloured salad leaves hung in festoons. The air filled suddenly with a mouthwatering aroma of cooked meats.

‘You know as well as I do that a couple of weeks is a hell of a long time when you are writing,’ she retorted crossly. Her headache had worsened, she felt tired and depressed and she could be as stubborn as he on occasions. ‘Don’t be an idiot, Jon. Anyway, you would get on much better without me.’ Somehow he had managed to make her feel guilty.

‘But I need you. Derek has got some terrific things lined up for me.’ Jon stubbed at the letter with his forefinger. ‘Telly in New York. And some wonderful parties. An interview with the New York Magazine and Publishers Weekly. You would meet everyone. He is expecting you to be there, Kate. We’re an item on the literary circuit –’

A wave of impatience swept over her. ‘I don’t care if your publisher is expecting me, Jon. I don’t care if the President of the United States is expecting me. You may be an item, but I am not. Nor am I a natty little accessory to complement your glittering image. If I tour New York it will be to publicise Lord of Darkness, not to be photographed smiling at your elbow. I’m sorry, but I’m going to stay here and work.’

Jon shook his head. His voice was suddenly bleak. ‘You can’t stay in the flat, Kate.’

‘What do you mean? Of course I can.’ Even then she took no notice of the warning bell clanging away at the back of her head.

He folded his arms, the familiar stubborn expression beginning to settle on his face softened by a hint of anxiety. ‘Derek has asked me to lend the flat to Cyrus Grandini while I’m away.’

Kate was speechless for a moment. ‘And who, may I ask, is Cyrus Grandini?’ she spluttered at last.

‘Oh, Kate.’ He was impatient. ‘The poet. For God’s sake, you must have heard of him!’

‘No. And I don’t wish to share a flat with him.’

His reply was apologetic. ‘There’s no question of sharing the flat. I’m sorry, Kate, but I have agreed he can have it for two weeks.’

‘But what about me? I thought it was my home too.’ She fought to keep the sudden panic out of her voice.

‘It is your home.’ He sounded angry rather than reassuring. ‘You know it is. Derek expected you to come to New York; so did I. I thought you would jump at the chance!’

‘Well, I haven’t.’

‘Then you will have to find somewhere else to go for a couple of weeks. I’m sorry.’

So, that was it. She knew where she stood. A lodger. A lover. But not a partner.

She stood up, scraping her chair back on the floor with such vehemence that the Japanese man next to her nearly dropped his pastry. He too leaped to his feet, climbing from behind the table so that she could squeeze inelegantly past him. A wave of frustration and anger and unhappiness swept over her. ‘If I go, I go for good,’ she stated flatly as her neighbour subsided once more into his chair and reached rather desperately for his pastry.

‘OK. If that’s the way you want it.’ He had turned away from her and sat, chin in hand, staring up at the horsemen from the Parthenon on the frieze on the wall above him, suddenly and shamefully near to tears. Correctly interpreting his rocklike stance the Japanese lady who had been preparing in her turn to rise and allow him to leave the table relaxed and took a large mouthful of sandwich.

It was after eleven when he returned to the flat that evening.

The front door led straight into the small sitting room where she was sitting reading, cosy in the warm light of the single table lamp. Outside she could hear the sleet hitting the window. The shoulders of Jon’s heavy jacket glistened and sparkled with unmelted ice. ‘Well, have you changed your mind?’ he asked.

For a moment she was confused, still lost in the world of Lord Byron and his friends. Unwillingly she dragged herself back to the present. ‘No. I haven’t changed my mind.’

‘It’s not working, is it?’ He stood in front of the electric fire and began slowly to unwind his long scarf.

‘What isn’t working?’ She kept her eyes on the book before her. Her stomach had clenched uncomfortably at his tone and the print blurred into an indistinguishable black haze.

‘Us.’

She looked up at last. ‘Because I won’t go to the States with you?’

‘That and other things. Kate, let’s face it. You’re too obsessed with your damn poet to have time for me. Look at you. Even now you can’t take your eyes off some bloody text or other.’ He swooped on her and grabbed it out of her hand. ‘See!’ He held it up triumphantly. ‘Victorian Poets!’ He hurled it down onto a chair. ‘He –’ by implication Kate gathered that ‘he’ meant Byron, ‘– comes between us all the time. You have no time for us; for our relationship, Kate.’

‘Jon –’

She was stung by the injustice of the remark but he swept on. ‘No, hear me out. You’re completely obsessive. You have no time for me at all.’

She leaped to her feet. It had taken her much of the afternoon to calm down after their exchange at the British Museum earlier. She had thought they could work things out amicably once he came home, once he had had time to think about the justice of everything she had said. ‘You … you say that, when all you ever talk about is your own work. Your friends, your parties, your TV interviews! You admitted that you only wanted me to go with you to the States as an appendage! The Jon Bevan literary circus. The wonderful, clever, stunning novelist and poet Jon Bevan and his cute girlfriend who writes such glitzy biographies – though heaven forbid that they should be taken as seriously as Jon’s oeuvre.’ Her hands had begun to shake as she realised the implications of what she was saying. She was condemning their relationship unequivocally to death. There would be no going back on this, no making up, no withdrawing of hurled insults. ‘You’re right, Jon, This relationship is not going to work. It’s over. Finished!’ Pushing past him, she flung out of the room.

Their bedroom was very small. The double bed, pushed against the wall, left space for a desk – her desk. On it her laptop sat amongst piles of books and papers. Jon’s desk was in the sitting room she had just left. Jon’s sitting room. Jon’s flat. She stared round in despair. Then she reached for her coat. Throwing it on, she turned and ran to the front door.

‘Kate. Don’t be childish. We can work this out.’ Jon followed her. Suddenly he was terrified by what he had done. ‘For Christ’s sake, where are you going?’

‘Out.’ She was fumbling with the deadlock.

‘You can’t go out. It’s nearly midnight and it’s snowing.’ His anger had gone. He saw himself suddenly as she must see him – selfish, arrogant, thoughtless, cruel. ‘Kate, please –’ He stretched out a hand towards her.

She did not answer. Slamming the door behind her she had run down the steps and out into the street.

II

She missed him.

The flat was tidy, already empty though she was still there, and the days were ticking by. She had to find somewhere, somewhere she could afford, to live, to lick her wounded self esteem, to write.

She tried to justify what had happened; to explain it to herself. He was right. It had not been working. There had been too much conflict, too much competition between them. And all the sacrifices had been hers: her time, her concentration, her money and her commitment.

Well, now it was over. All her time, her concentration, her commitment could be focussed on one thing. One man. Byron. She stood, spreading honey on a slice of bread, watching the wholemeal crumbs disintegrate. Frowning, she tried to stick the crumbs back together. She couldn’t stay in London, that was obvious. Her money – the money she had leant him – had been her sole source of income. She had spent a morning scouring her bank statement and building society book, calculator in hand, trying to see how far she could make the last few hundred pounds stretch. Thank God she had had the sense to stick some of it into a tax fund which, even for Jon, she had not touched. Without that she would be in trouble indeed. It was all her fault. She was a sucker, a classic, besotted mug. She had no one to blame but herself. And Jon. She had tried calling him names. It helped, but always she came back to the empty space in her life and the fact that she missed him.

But life had to go on, which was why, two days later, she found herself at Broadcasting House, where her old friend, Bill Norcross, ran one of the production departments.

‘So, is what I hear on the grapevine true? You and Jon are a couple no more. The beautiful Kate Kennedy has turned at bay and bitten the hand that fed her.’

Bill leaned back in his chair and waved Kate into its twin, angled on the far side of his desk.

Swallowing a retort Kate sat down, aware of his eyes sliding automatically from the top of her black leather boots to the line of her hem. Secure in the knowledge that her thighs were thickly and unglamorously shrouded in black woollen tights she crossed her legs, deliberately provocative. ‘He never fed me Bill. I paid my share,’ she said calmly.

Bill grinned amiably. She was tall, like Jon, and with a similarity of build which had led many people to take them for brother and sister. Where on Jon the look was loose-limbed and laid back, on her it was elegant and graceful, an impression compounded by her long brown hair, tied loosely at the nape of her neck with a scarlet silk scarf, and by the slender fingers which at the moment dangled the pair of spectacles which she had put on to scrutinise Bill’s face and then removed as though a ten second scan was enough for a lifetime.

‘I need your help, Bill. I need somewhere to live for a bit.’ She paused and gave him a slow, reluctant smile. ‘I wondered if I could stay in your cottage.’

Bill frowned. ‘My God! You must be desperate. Do you know where my cottage is?’

She laughed. ‘It’s up in North Essex, isn’t it?’

‘It’s in the most beautiful corner of Essex, which is, to my mind, the most beautiful corner of England. But alas, at this time of year, it is also the most inaccessible and cold. I have only a minimum of so-called mod cons, the bedroom’s full of rubble, the roof leaks and it’s very damp and cold. You’d be miserable. Has Jon thrown you out?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’ She narrowed her lips. ‘I thought we shared a flat, but apparently not.’

‘So, you have split up?’

She nodded. ‘The histrionics are over. We’re both being frightfully civilised.’ It hurt to talk about it.

She had known Bill for fifteen years, since they had been freshers together at university. He was one of her best friends, but she was not going to tell him about the money. What she had done with her savings to render her unable to pay a decent rent was none of his business. Besides, Jon had promised he would pay her back when he received his next advance. Or the next … Cheerful, generous, feckless, selfish bloody Jon! and she was the mug who fell for him!

Bill leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. A stout, balding man in his mid thirties, he had a humorous, likable face which to his chagrin, failed to convey anything other than a perpetual, cheerful bonhomie.

‘Am I right in thinking Jon has relieved you of most of the dosh you made with Jane?’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that what he told you?’

‘Not in so many words, no. I guessed. I’ve known you both a long while, after all, before you even met each other. Are you completely skint or can you afford some rent?’

‘Some,’ she said guardedly. ‘But not London prices.’

‘No. Near me. In Essex. Up at Redall Bay. My neighbours have a cottage they want to rent to someone for six months. It’s a couple of miles from mine; a lot more civilised. Quiet.’ He gave a sudden laugh. ‘Quiet as the grave.’

‘Would they rent it to me?’

‘I’m sure they would. They were talking about it last time I was up there. They need the money. If I recommend you and if you can rustle up a cheque for three months’ rent in advance I’m pretty certain I can fix it for you.’ He leaned forward abruptly and pulled open a desk drawer. The sheaf of photos he threw onto the blotter in front of her were crumpled and much thumbed. ‘It’s bleak, Kate. You’d better think hard about it. You would be terribly lonely.’

She picked them up with a glance at his face. ‘I know it’s bleak. I know the coast. I’ve been up there once or twice.’

The pictures featured a series of holiday scenes: people, boats, dogs, children, sand, shingle and always the sea – a grey-green, muddy sea. In one she saw a small cottage in the distance. ‘Is that your place?’

He nodded. ‘I don’t go there much in the winter. I can’t stand the cold and the desolation.’

‘It looks lovely. But too crowded.’ She glanced up at him mischievously. ‘I want solitude. I am writing a book, don’t forget.’

‘What else?’ With an expansive gesture of his arms Bill stood up. ‘If I can find a tenant for Roger and Diana who can pay good solid money for the privilege of staying in that God-forsaken cottage of theirs freezing their balls off – saving your presence – I shall earn loads of Brownie points with them and they’ll be in my debt forever. Give me a couple of days to phone them and send them your cheque and I can assure you that provided it doesn’t bounce, they will welcome you with open arms.’

She stood up. ‘Don’t tell Jon where I’m going, Bill, assuming he’s even remotely interested,’ she said as she left. ‘At least for now I want it to be a complete break. On my terms.’

‘Bitch.’ It was said with great affection.

‘Well, why not. He’s dropped me in it.’ She was surprised at her own lack of anger.

‘Silly sod.’ Bill grinned amiably. ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll drive down with you at the weekend. It won’t do any harm for my place to have a quick airing, then you can drop me at the station on Sunday night and I shall abandon you to the east wind and return here to my creature comforts.’

It did not take long to clear her stuff out of Jon’s flat. There didn’t seem to be much of it – apart from her books, of course.

They had discussed it all amicably in the end, just as she had determined that they should. They had been adult and businesslike and utterly calm in the division of their affairs – a divorce without the complications of a marriage – and with a cool kiss on her cheek Jon had departed for New York several days earlier than he had originally intended. He did not ask her where she was going; they had not mentioned the money.

A half-dozen boxes and suitcases packed into the back of her car, a carton of plants, carefully wrapped against the cold wind, and an armful of unwanted clothes. That was the sum total of her life in London which she ferried to the attic of Bill’s house in Hampstead – all to be put in store except the plants which were to be pampered and coddled by him far from the East Anglian wind. That left her laptop and printer, her books, her boxes of filing cards and notes and a couple of suitcases packed with jeans and thick sweaters and rubber boots. It was not until she had piled them into her small Peugeot and gone for one last look around the flat that the small treacherous lump in her throat threatened to choke her. She swallowed it sternly. This was the beginning of the rest of her life. Slamming the front door behind her she pushed her keys through the letter box, hearing them thump onto the carpet the other side of the door with a dull finality which suited her mood exactly. She had not enquired how Cyrus Grandini would gain entry to the flat and Jon had not told her. Turning the collar of her jacket up around her ears she ran down the steps towards her car. She would pick Bill up at the Beeb on her way across London and then together they would head north-east.

III

The tide crept higher, drawn inescapably onward by the full moon lost behind ten thousand feet of towering cumulus. Softened by the sleet in the ice-cold wind the sand grew muddy and pliant beneath the questing fingers of water. The shingle bank was deserted, lonely in the darkness. As the water lapped the stones in silence, gently probing, a lump of sand broke away from the mound behind it and subsided into the blackness of the water. Behind it, a further fissure formed. Matted grass strained and tore, a network of fine roots pulling, clinging, interlocked. The grass hissed before the wind, grains of sand flicked into the air by a gust, veering round into the east. Now the wind and the tide were of one mind and, inexorably, the water crept forward.

The small pocket of clay, left on the floodplain of the River Storwell after the glaciers had melted, had two thousand years ago, been at the bottom of a freshwater marsh. Long ago drained, the marsh had gone and the rich pasture which replaced it had turned, over the centuries, to arable then to scrub and to woodland, and then, as the sea advanced inexorably on the eastern coasts of England, to shingle beach. Now, after nearly two millennia of change and of erosion the soil, sand and gravel which still separated the clay from the air and the light was only centimetres thick.

IV

Diana Lindsey’s plump figure was swathed in a thick pair of trousers, an anorak and a vast lambswool shawl as she stood in the doorway of Redall Cottage watching her eldest son lighting the fire. She was a small fair-haired woman, pretty, with light green eyes and reddened, work-worn hands.

‘Hurry up. Lunch will be ready soon, Greg. I’ve already wasted enough of this morning with all your fuss.’ She cast a professional glance around the small living room. Watery sunlight poured through the window, illuminating the bright rag rugs on the floor and the small sofa and chair which had been pulled up around the fire. She was pleased with the room. They had only had twenty-four hours to tidy the place, to move Greg’s belongings out of it and to replace them with a few pieces of respectable furniture: a table and two chairs for the kitchen; a small Victorian nursing chair for the bedroom where the double bed had been the only fixture; sheets, towels, a box of basic groceries – Bill’s idea and well beyond the landlord’s brief, but she had agreed with him that the place would be cold and lonely enough without finding there was no food or coffee in the cupboards and no shops for miles, and those there were, not open until Monday morning. The final touch had been to light the woodburner which was settling now to a steady roar, and fill a vase with winter jasmine for the kitchen table.

Greg latched the burner’s doors and stood up. His burly presence filled the small room and he had to bend his head beneath the ceiling beams. ‘Right. Satisfied now, Ma? Lady Muck will be comfortable as a bug in a turd here.’

‘Don’t be vulgar, Greg.’ Her reproach was automatic. Bored. She went through into the kitchen and had a final look round there, too. The pots and pans and plates were almost unused – Greg had never bothered to cook anything except coffee as far as she could tell. The knives and forks and spoons she had brought over from the farmhouse. ‘Right. Let’s get back. Bill phoned to say they would probably be here by tea time. He wanted her to settle in before it got dark.’

‘How wise.’ Greg pulled open the front door. Behind them the flames in the woodburner dipped and flared and steadied behind the blackening glass of the doors. ‘Shall I call Allie?’

Leaving his mother to head for the Land Rover parked at the end of the rutted track which led through the half mile or so of bleak woods separating the cottage from Redall Farmhouse, he turned and walked around the side of the cottage. The small, timber-framed building, painted a soft pink, nestled in a half-moon of trees. Behind it, short rabbit-cropped turf formed an informal lawn which straggled towards the sand and shingle spit separating the estuary of the River Storwell from the beach and the cold waves of the North Sea. It was a windy, exposed site, even today when the sun was shining fitfully from behind the broken cloud.

‘Allie!’ Greg cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed for his sister. As his mother opened the door of the Land Rover and climbed in, he disappeared around to the far side of the cottage into the teeth of the wind.

Alison Lindsey, fifteen years old, her blonde hair tightly caught by a rubber band into a pony tail tucked into the neck of her yellow windcheater, was crouching in the lee of one of the shingle and sand dunes which stood between the cottage and the sea. She glanced up as her brother appeared and raised her hand, the wind whipping tendrils of hair into her eyes.

‘What have you found?’ He jumped down the small sandy cliff to stand beside her. Out of the wind it was suddenly very quiet, almost warm in the trapped sunlight.

‘Look. The sea washed the sand away here. It must have happened at high tide.’ She had been scrabbling at the sand; her fingers were caked with it. He could see where she had caught her nail. A small streak of blood mingled with the golden red grains stuck to her skin. She had dug away the side of the dune and pulled something free. ‘See. It’s some kind of pottery.’

He took it from her, curious. It was slipware, red, the glaze shiny with a raised pattern, hardly scratched by the sand.

‘Pretty. It must be something someone chucked out of the cottage. Come on Allie. Ma’s in a ferment. She wants to feed us all before she goes off to Ipswich or wherever it is she is going this afternoon, and I want to get out of here before Lady Muck turns up.’

Alison took the piece of pottery from her brother and wedged it into her anorak pocket. She glanced up at him. ‘Why do you call her that? She’s famous, you know. She’s written a book.’

‘Exactly.’ He smiled grimly. ‘And no doubt will feel herself superior in every way to us country bumpkins.’ He gave a short laugh as he scrambled up the bank and turned to give his sister a hand, hauling her bodily out of the sandy hollow. ‘Well, she’ll soon find out that living in the country at this time of year is not the same as swanning out for the odd picnic in the summer. Then perhaps she’ll go away.’

‘And let you have the cottage back?’ Alison surveyed him shrewdly, her green eyes serious.

‘And let me have my cottage back.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Don’t say anything to Ma, Allie, but I think between us you and I can find a way to chase Lady Muck away from Redall Cottage, don’t you?’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps we can give the weather a helping hand. Scare her off somehow.’

‘You bet.’ She laughed. Then she frowned. ‘But don’t we need the money?’

‘Money!’ Greg snorted. ‘Doesn’t anyone think of anything else around here? For the love of Mike, there are other things in the world. We’re not going to starve. Dad’s pay-off and his pension are more than enough to last us for years. We can afford petrol and electricity and food. They can afford to buy booze. My dole money buys my paint and canvas. What does every one want all this money for?’

Alison shrugged dutifully. She knew better than to argue with her elder brother. Besides he was probably right. She sternly pushed down a sneaking suspicion that his views were simplistic and wildly immature – he was, after all, twelve years older than she – and, pushing her wispy hair out of her eyes for the thousandth time as they reached the Land Rover, she pulled open the door and hauled herself into the front seat beside her mother.

In the farmhouse the third Lindsey offspring, Patrick, had been laying the table for lunch, walking silently around the kitchen in his socks as his father dozed in the cane chair before the Aga, two cats asleep in his lap. The silence of the room was broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner and by the gentle bubbling from the heavy pan on the stove. The air was rich and heavy with the fragrance of the cooking chicken in its thick herb-flavoured gravy. Two years older than Alison, Patrick was the studious member of the family. Upstairs in his bedroom – the north-facing end room above the kitchen, according to Alison the best room in the house because of its size – computer, printer, calculating machines and hundreds of books vied with one another for space, overflowing from tables and chairs on to the floor and even from time to time out into the corridor outside his sister’s room. At the moment Patrick was lost in thought, his mind still fully occupied with his school project. He noticed neither the noise of the engine as his brother drove up outside and parked the Land Rover around the side of the house, nor the speed with which Number Two cat, Marmalade Jones, jumped off his master’s lap and onto the worktop where he proceeded to lick the pat of butter which Patrick had incautiously withdrawn from the fridge.

The opening door woke Roger, startled Patrick and gave the cat an unwonted and sudden attack of conscience.

‘My goodness it’s cold out there.’ Diana went straight to the heavy iron pan simmering quietly on the Aga and peered inside it before she took off her coat.

‘Bill rang.’ Roger stretched and reached for the newspaper which had slid from his inert fingers as he slept. Indignant at the move, Number One cat, Serendipity Smith, slipped from his knees and diving through the open studwork which separated the kitchen from the living room, went to sit on the rug in front of the fire, staring enigmatically into the embers. ‘They should be here by about three. Apparently she’s an absolute cracker!’ He grinned at his eldest son and gave a suggestive wink. ‘You might try charming her, Greg, just this once. I can’t believe as your mother’s son you are completely devoid of the art.’

‘Oh you.’ Diana gave her husband a playful tap on the head.

Greg ignored them both. Sealed in an intense inner world of frustrated imagination he frequently missed his parents’ affectionate banter. Walking through to the fire he stooped and threw on a log. ‘Half the old dune behind the cottage has gone,’ he called through to them. ‘You know the one which shelters it from the north-easterlies. A few more tides like that one last week and we’ll need to worry about the cottage being washed away.’

‘Rubbish.’ Diana, having hung up her coat was now tying a huge apron over her trousers. The apron sported a giant red London bus which appeared to be driving across the rotund acres of her stomach. She shook her head. ‘No way. That cottage has been there hundreds of years.’

‘And once upon a time it was miles from the sea, my darling.’ Roger stood up. Painfully thin, his face was haggard with tiredness, a symptom of the illness which had forced him to take early retirement. ‘Come on. Why don’t I open a bottle of wine. That stew of yours smells so good I could eat it.’ He smiled and his wife, on her way back to the Aga with her wooden spoon, paused to give him a quick hug.

‘Show Dad the piece of china you found in the dune, Allie,’ Greg called from the next room. His sister, still wearing her anorak, had seated herself at the table, her elbows planted amongst the knives and forks which Patrick had aligned with geometric neatness. She fished in her pocket and produced it.

Roger took it from her and turned it over with interest. ‘Its unusual. Old I should say. Look at the colour of that glaze, Greg.’ He held it out towards his eldest son. Reluctantly, Greg left the fire. Taking the fragment he turned it over in his hands. ‘You could take it into the museum some time, kiddo,’ he said to Alison. ‘See what they say.’

‘I might.’ Alison stood up and they were all surprised to see her eyes alight with excitement. Her usual carefully-studied air of ennui had for a moment slipped. ‘Do you know what I think? I think it’s Roman. There’s stuff just like it in the castle museum.’

‘Oh, Allie love, it couldn’t be. Not out here.’ Diana had produced four glasses from the cupboard. She handed her husband the corkscrew. ‘The Romans never came this far out of Colchester.’

‘They did, actually. They’ve found a lot of Roman stuff at Kindling’s farm,’ Roger put in. He tore the foil from the top of the wine bottle. ‘Do you remember? They found the remains of a villa there. Some rich Roman chap from Colchester retired here. They found an inscription.’

Alison nodded. ‘Marcus Severus Secundus,’ she said, intoning the words softly.

‘That’s right.’ Roger nodded. ‘There was an article about him in the local paper. And they found even older stuff too. Iron Age, I think it was, or Bronze Age or something. Are you still thinking of doing something archaeological for your project, Allie?’ He smiled at his daughter.

‘Might.’ Her sudden burst of enthusiasm had apparently run its course. She sat down again and spread her elbows, scattering knives and forks. Patrick frowned, but he said nothing. He had learned a long time ago that a comment from him would produce a tirade of abuse from his sister which would upset everyone and end up with the whole meal being spoiled. It had happened before too often.

‘I’m going to excavate the dune.’ Alison’s sudden announcement stopped Roger’s hand in mid air as he poured the wine.

‘That sounds a bit ambitious, old girl,’ he said cautiously. ‘There would be a lot of hard digging and you might not find anything.’

‘I found something before.’

‘In the same place?’ Greg looked across at her, disbelieving. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘None of your business.’ Alison reached for a glass of wine which left Patrick without one.

‘Hey, that’s mine –’

‘Pour yourself one.’ When neither parent said anything she raised the glass defiantly to her lips and took a sip.

‘What did you find, Allie?’ Roger’s voice took on the conciliatory tone he often used with his daughter – soft, persuasive, almost pleading.

‘I’ll show you.’ She rose to her feet, and, her glass still in her hand, trailed towards the staircase which led from the living room behind the door in the corner by the inglenook.

‘There’s loads of books on archaeology in her room,’ Patrick put in in an undertone when she was out of earshot.

‘You haven’t been in there again.’ Diana was exasperated. ‘You know she doesn’t like it –’

‘She nicked my Aran sweater. I needed it.’ Patrick’s mouth settled in a hard line, exactly like his sister’s as Alison reappeared with a shoe box in her hand.

‘Look. I found all these on the beach there, or in the cliff or in the saltings, and these two I dug up from the dune.’ She tipped the contents of the box onto the table amongst the knives and forks. For once there was no comment about the shower of dirty sand which descended over the cutlery on Diana’s scrubbed table top: several shards, a few pieces of carved bone and one or two unrecognisable fragments of twisted, corroded metal. ‘I think it’s a grave. A Roman grave,’ she said solemnly.

There was a moment’s silence.

Slowly Greg shook his head. ‘No chance. If it’s anything at all, it’s one of those red hill things – to do with ancient salt workings. Not that that isn’t extremely interesting,’ he went on hastily after a glance at the rebellious set of his sister’s face. ‘Perhaps we should get someone over here who knows about these things.’

‘No!’ Alison rounded on him furiously. ‘I don’t want anyone knowing about it. No one at all. It’s mine. My grave. I found it. You’re not to tell anyone it’s there, do you understand. Not anyone at all. I am going to dig there. Anything I find is mine. If you tell anyone it will ruin everything. Everything!’

Sweeping her treasures back into the box, she clamped the lid on it and flung out of the room.

‘Let her be.’ Diana turned comfortably to the stove. ‘She’ll grow bored with it when she realises how much hard work is involved. And I’m sure there is nothing there. Nothing at all that would interest anyone sane, anyway.’ She smiled tolerantly. ‘Clear up that mess would you, Patrick darling and then let’s eat, otherwise our guests will be here before we’ve finished.’

V

His nails had cut deep welts into the palms of his hand; the veins stood out, corded, pulsating on his forehead and neck, but his silence was the silence of a stalking cat. Not a leaf crisped beneath his soft-soled sandals, not a twig cracked. Soundlessly, he parted the leaves and peered into the clearing. His wife’s long tunic and cloak lay amongst the bluebells, a splash of blue upon the blue. The man’s weapons, and his clothing, lay beside them. He could see the sword unsheathed, the blade gleaming palely in the leaf-dappled sunlight. He could hear her moans of pleasure, see the reddened marks of her nails on his shoulders. She had never writhed like that beneath him, never uttered a sound, never raked his skin in her ecstasy. Beneath him the woman he adored and worshipped would lie still; compliant, dutiful, her eyes open, staring up at the ceiling, on her lips the smallest hint of a sneer.

He swallowed his bile, schooling himself to silence, watching, waiting for the climax of their passion. His sword was at his waist, but he did not reach for it. Death at the moment of fulfilment would send them to the gods together. It would be too easy, too quick. Even as he watched them he felt the last remnants of his love curdle and settle into thick hatred. The punishment he would inflict upon his wife would last for the rest of her days; for her lover he would plan a death which would satisfy even his fury. But until the right moment came, he would wait. He would welcome her back to his hearth and to his bed with a smile. His hatred would remain, like his anger, hidden.

Watery sunlight filled Roger’s study, reflecting in from the bleak garden, throwing pale shifting lights across the low ceiling with its heavy oak beams. Greg flung himself down in his father’s chair and stared round morosely. He would never be able to paint here. Somehow he had to get Lady Muck out of the cottage – his cottage – so he could go back. She must not be allowed to stay.

The small room was stacked with canvasses and sketch pads. His easel filled the space between the desk and the window; the table was laden with boxes of paints and pencils and the general debris he had fetched down from the cottage; a new smell of linseed oil and white spirit overlaid the room’s natural aroma of old books, Diana’s rich crumbling pot pourri and lavender furniture polish. Thoughtfully he stood up. He leafed through a stack of canvasses and lifted one onto the easel, then he sat down again, staring at it.

The portrait bothered him. It was one of a series he had done over the past two or three years. All of the same woman, they were sad, mysterious; evocations of mood rather than of feature; of beauty by implication rather than definition. This was the largest canvas – three feet by four – that he had tackled for a long time and it had given him the most trouble.

He sat gnawing at the knuckle of his left thumb for several minutes before he glanced round for brush and palette. It was the colours that were wrong. She was too hazy; too indistinct. Her colouring needed to be more definite, her vivacity more pronounced. He stood close to the canvas, leaning forward intently, and stabbed at it with the brush. He had made her too beautiful, the bitch, too seductive. He ought to paint her as she was – a whore; a traitor; a cat on heat.

His tongue protruding a little from the corner of his mouth, he worked furiously at the painting, blocking in the face, shading the planes of the cheeks, sketching lips and eyes, touching in the line of the hair, his anger growing with every brushstroke.

It was a long time before he threw down the brush, wiping his hands carelessly on the front of his old, ragged sweater. He stood back and stared at his handiwork through narrowed eyes, aware that as the sun moved lower in the sky, slanting first across the estuary and then across the bleak winter woods, the light was changing once again and with it her face. He glared down at the palette he had slid onto his father’s desk, aware that the anger was leaving him as swiftly as it had come and wondering, not for the first time, where it came from.

VI

Turning the car off the road Kate found they were bumping along an unmade track through a wood. Before them the sky, laced with shredded, blowing cloud had that peculiar intensity of light which denotes the close proximity of the sea.

‘I hope we don’t have to go far down here,’ she commented, slowing to walking pace as the small vehicle grounded for the second time on the deep ruts. Winding down the window she took a deep appreciative breath of the ice-cold air. It carried the sharp, resinous tang of pine and earth and rotting leaves.

‘I’m afraid it gets worse.’ Bill grimaced. ‘And you’ll have to leave your car at the farmhouse. Roger or Greg will run all your stuff up to the cottage in their Land Rover.’

The track forked. In front of them a rough wooden gibbet held two or three fire brooms – threadbare, broken. She brought the car to a standstill. ‘Which way?’

‘Right. My place is up there to the left – about half a mile. The farmhouse is down here.’ He gestured through the windscreen and cautiously she let in the clutch once more. The track began to descend sharply. They bounced again into the ruts as the wood grew more dense. Pine was interspersed with old stumpy oaks, hazel breaks strung with ivy and dried traveller’s joy and thickets of black impenetrable thorn.

The farmhouse itself stood at the edge of the woods, facing east across the saltings. Behind it a thin strip of field and orchard allowed the fitful sunshine to brighten the landscape before another wood separated the farmhouse gardens from the sea. There was no sign of any cottage.

She halted the car beside a black-boarded barn and sat for a moment staring out. The farmhouse was pink washed, a long, low building, covered in leafless creepers which in the summer were probably clematis and roses. Even in the depths of winter the place looked extraordinarily pretty.

‘What a lovely setting.’

‘Not too wild for you?’ Bill glanced beyond the farmhouse to the mudflats. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but mud and water and grey-green stretches of salting. A stray low shaft of sunlight shone from behind them throwing a sunpath over the mud towards the water. The rich colour lasted a moment and then it had gone.

Bill opened the car door allowing biting, pure air into the warm fug. ‘Come on. It will start getting dark soon. I think we should get you settled in.’

Kate surveyed her hosts as she shook hands with them. Roger and Diana Lindsey were both in their fifties, she guessed. Comfortable, quiet, welcoming. She found herself responding immediately to their warmth.

‘I thought you would like some tea here before you go up to the cottage,’ Diana said at once, ushering her towards the sofa. ‘Make yourself comfy – move those cats – and then I’ll give my son a call. He is going to take your stuff up there for you. It’s a long walk carrying luggage.’

‘And she’s got a heap of it,’ Bill put in. He was standing with his back to the fire, his palms held out behind him towards the smouldering logs. ‘Computers and stuff.’

‘Oh, my goodness.’ Diana frowned. ‘In which case you’ll certainly need help.’

‘Where is the cottage?’ Kate, while enjoying the soporific comfort of the tea and the warmth of the fire, was eager to see it. Over the last couple of days her excitement, though partly dampened by the thought of how much she was missing Jon – a thought she had deliberately tried to erase – had been intense.

‘It’s about half a mile from here. Through the wood. You’re right on the edge of the sea out there, my dear. I hope you’ve brought lots of warm clothes.’ Solicitously Diana refilled Kate’s cup, inserting herself between Kate and the staircase door where she had spotted a movement. The kids were spying. No doubt any moment now they would appear. She sighed. Kids indeed. She meant Alison and Greg. Patrick would no doubt be upstairs by now with his computers and would not reappear until called for supper. It was her elder son – a grown man, old enough to know better – and her daughter, who were, if she were any judge of character, going to cause trouble.

She glanced over her shoulder at Roger. ‘Give Greg a call. I want him to help Miss Kennedy –’

‘Kate, please.’

‘Kate.’ She flashed Kate a quick smile. ‘He could start loading her stuff into the Land Rover.’

‘I don’t want to be a nuisance.’

‘You won’t be.’ Was it Kate’s imagination, or was there a certain grim determination in the way Diana said those words?

Greg, when called, turned out to be a man in his late twenties or early thirties, Kate guessed, which made him around her age or slightly younger. His handsome features were slightly blurred – too many beers and too little care of himself – and his thick pullover was smeared with oil paint. He shook hands with her amiably enough but she sensed a hint of reserve, even resentment in his manner. It was enough to make her question her first impression that here was a very attractive man.

‘I’m sorry. It’s a nuisance for you to have to drive me to the cottage,’ she said. She met his eyes challengingly.

‘But necessary if our tenant is to be safely installed,’ he replied. His voice was deep; musical but cold.

Bill must have felt it too. She saw him frown as he levered himself to his feet from the low sofa. ‘Come on, Greg. I’ll give you a hand. Leave the others to finish their tea, eh?’

As the front door opened and the two men disappeared into the swiftly-falling dusk, a wisp of fragrant apple smoke blew back down the chimney.

‘You can park your car in the barn, Kate,’ Roger said comfortably. He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out towards the fire. ‘It’ll be out of the worst of the weather there. Pick it up whenever you want, and if you have any heavy groceries and things at any time give us a shout and we’ll run them over for you. It’s a damn nuisance the track is so bad. I keep meaning to ask our neighbour if he’ll bring a digger or something up here and level it off a bit, but you know how it is. We’ve never got round to it.’

‘I’ve come for the solitude.’ Kate smiled at him. ‘I really don’t want to be rushing up and down. I’ll lay in some stores at the nearest shop and then I’d like to cut myself off from the world for a bit.’ The thought excited her. The great emptiness of the country after London, the sharp, clean air as she had climbed out of the car, had heightened her anticipation.

‘You’ll be doing that all right. Especially if the weather is bad,’ Roger gave a snort which might have been a laugh. ‘There is a telephone over there, however. You might find you’re glad of it after a bit, but if you want peace you’d better keep the number quiet.’ He looked up as the door opened.

‘All loaded.’ Bill grinned at them. ‘I think what I’ll do, if you don’t mind, Kate, is begin to make my way back to my place. It’s quite a walk from here. I’ll leave you to Greg and I’ll wander over tomorrow morning if that’s all right. Then I can show you the way back on foot in daylight, and perhaps we can have a drink together before you drop me off in Colchester to catch the train for London.’

The Land Rover’s headlights lit up the trees with an eerie green light as they lurched slowly away from the farmhouse into the darkness. Kate found herself sliding around on the slippery, hard seat and she grabbed frantically at the dash to give herself something to hold on to, with a worried thought for the computer stored somewhere in the back.

‘Sorry. Am I going too fast?’ Greg slowed slightly. He glanced at her. He had already taken note of her understated good looks. Her hair was mousy but long and thick, her bones good, her clothes expensive, but he got the feeling she wasn’t much interested in them. The undeniable air of chic which clung to her was, he was fairly sure, achieved by accident rather than design and the thought annoyed him. It seemed unfair that she should have so much. ‘I take it you’re not the nervous type. I can’t think of many women who would want to live out here completely alone in the middle of winter.’

Kate studied his profile in the glow of the dashboard lights. ‘No. I’m not the nervous type,’ she said. ‘I enjoy my own company. And I’ve come here to work. I don’t think I’ll have time to feel lonely.’

‘Good. And you’re not afraid of ghosts, I hope.’

It had been Allie’s idea, to attempt to scare her away with talk of ghosts. It was worth a try. At least until he thought of something better.

‘Ghosts?’

‘Only joking.’ His eyes were fixed on the track ahead. ‘This land belonged once to a Roman officer of the legion, Marcus Severus Secundus. There’s a statue of him in Colchester Castle. A handsome bastard. I like to think he strolls around the garden sometimes, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen him.’ He grinned. Not too much too fast. The woman wasn’t a fool. Or the nervous type, obviously. ‘I’m sure he’s harmless.’ He narrowed his eyes, concentrating on the track.

Beside him Kate smiled. Her excitement if anything increased.

The cottage when it appeared at last seemed to her delight to be a miniature version of the farmhouse. It had pink walls and creeper and was, she could see in the headlights as they pulled up facing it, a charmingly rambling small building with a peg-tiled roof and smoking chimney. Beyond it she could see the dull gleam of the sea between towering banks of shingle. Leaving the headlights on, Greg jumped down. He made no effort to help her, instead going straight round to the rear of the vehicle, leaving her to struggle with the unfamiliar door handle. When she at last managed to force the door open and jump down, he straightened, his hair streaming into his eyes in the wind. Before she realised what he was doing, he threw a bunch of keys at her. She missed and they fell at her feet in the dark.

‘Butterfingers.’ The mocking words reached her through the wind. ‘Go and open the front door, I’ll carry this stuff in for you and then I can get back.’

The door had swollen slightly with the damp and she found she had to push it hard to make it open. By the time she had done it Greg was standing impatiently behind her, his arms full of boxes. She scrabbled for a light switch and found it at last. The light revealed a small white-painted hall with a staircase immediately in front of her and three doors, two to the left and one to the right.

‘On the right,’ Greg directed. ‘I’ll dump all this for you and you can sort it out yourself.’

She opened the door. The living room, low-ceilinged and heavily beamed like its counterpart in the farmhouse, boasted a sofa and two easy chairs. In the deep fireplace a wood burning stove glowed quietly, warming the room. The other three walls each had a small-paned window, beyond which the black windy night was held at bay by the reflection of the lamp as she switched it on. She crossed and drew the curtains on each in turn. By the time she had finished Greg had brought in another pile of stuff.

‘Well, that’s it,’ he said at last. He had made no attempt to tidy it or distribute things for her. All were lumped together in a heap in the middle of the rug. ‘If you need anything you can tell us tomorrow.’

‘I will. Thank you.’ She gave him a smile.

He did not respond. With a curt goodnight he turned and ducked out of the front door, pulling it closed behind him. Resisting a childish urge to run to the window and watch him leave she saw the glow of the headlights brighten the curtains for a moment as they swept across them, then they disappeared. She was alone.

Walking out into the hall she pulled the door bolt across and then turned back. The sudden wave of loneliness in the total silence was only to be expected. She sighed, looking round. Somehow she had expected that Bill would be with her this first evening. Or that the new landlord would invite her over for supper.

It had all been such a rush up until now. The packing, the storing of her stuff, borrowing books from the London Library, arranging her new life, separating herself from Jon; she had had little time to think and she had welcomed her exhaustion each evening. It meant she did not dwell on things. Here there would be plenty of time to dwell unless she was very careful. She straightened her shoulders. There would also be plenty of time to work, but first she would explore her new domain.

The cottage was very small. Downstairs there was only the one living room with a small kitchen and even smaller bathroom next to it. Upstairs there were two bedrooms, almost identical in size. Only one had a bed. In that room someone had made an attempt at cosiness. There was a chest of drawers and a small Victorian chair upholstered in rubbed gold velvet, with a couple of soft cushions tossed onto it. There was a new rug on the sloping floor and a wardrobe, which touched the low beamed ceiling. Inside was a row of wire hangers. Kate went downstairs again. Her initial excitement and sense of adventure was slipping away. The silence oppressed her. Taking a deep breath she went into the kitchen and reached for the kettle. While it boiled she lugged her two suitcases upstairs and left them. She would hang up the dresses and two skirts which she had brought with her later. All her other clothes – jeans, trousers, sweaters – she could stuff into the small chest of drawers tomorrow. She did not feel like unpacking this evening.

After sorting out some of her books and papers, stacking them all neatly on the table in the living room, and putting the food and the bottle of Scotch she had brought with her into the kitchen cupboards she felt too tired to do any more. She made herself some tea, selected a couple of tapes and sat down, exhausted, on the sofa near the fire, her feet curled up under her. Her hands cupped around the mug, she sat listening to the strains of Vaughan Williams on her cassette player, strangely aware of the giant heave and swell of the sea outside beyond the shingle bank, even though she could not hear it.

She should have felt pleased with herself. She was in the country at last. She was ready to begin work. She had the peace and quiet she desired – Greg’s attitude had not left her in any doubt that her privacy would be respected – and yet there was a nagging sadness, a feeling of anticlimax which had not a little to do with Jon, curse him. Only three weeks before, she had been living with him, researching the book, settled, a Londoner at least for the foreseeable future, and now here she was in a small cottage on the wild north-eastern coast of Essex with strangers for neighbours, no money, no man, no fixed abode and only Lord Byron for company.

Glancing at the floor where her boxes of books lay in a pool of lamplight she stood up again restlessly. She went over and, groping for her glasses in the pocket of her jeans, she began wearily to tear the sticky tape from the top of one of them. She must stay positive. Forget Jon. Forget London. Forget everything except the book.

The door banging upstairs made her jump. She glanced up at the ceiling and she could feel her heart thumping suddenly somewhere in the back of her throat. For a moment she did nothing, then slowly she straightened.

There was no one in the house so it must have been the wind, but at the foot of the stairs she paused, looking up into the darkness, the thought of Greg’s legionnaire suddenly in the forefront of her mind.

Taking a firm grip on herself she walked up onto the landing. Both doors stood open as she had left them. Switching on the light she peered into the bedroom where earlier she had put her cases side by side near the cupboard. She looked round the room, satisfied herself that nothing was amiss and turned off the light. She repeated the action across the landing, staring round the empty bedroom, her eyes gazing uncomfortably at the two windows which were curtainless. The glass reflected the cold light of the central naked bulb and she was very conscious once again of the blackness of the night outside.

Frowning, she went downstairs. There had been nothing that she could see to account for the noise. She peered into the bathroom and the kitchen and then turned back to the living room.

The room was distinctly chilly. Walking over to the woodburner she peered at it doubtfully and, seeing the reassuring glow from within had disappeared, she stooped and reached for the latch. The metal was hot. She swore under her breath and looked round for something to pad her hands. Finding nothing she tugged at her sleeve and, wrapping the wool of her jersey around her fingers, she jiggled the latch undone and swung the doors open. The stove contained nothing but a bed of embers.

She glanced round but she had already realised that her tour of the cottage had yielded no coal; no log basket. She had grown spoiled living in London; the subject of heating had never crossed her mind. Central heating arrived for her these days at the flick of a switch. The hot water and heating in this cottage, it dawned on her suddenly, probably all depended on this small stove. Why hadn’t Greg mentioned it? Surely the first thing he should have told her was how to heat the place. She shook her head in irritation. The omission was probably deliberate. She would have had to be very dense not to have sensed his hostility and resentment. Teach the townie a lesson. Well, if the townie wasn’t going to freeze to death she would have to find some fuel from somewhere. A swift search produced one box of matches in the kitchen drawer, – thank heaven for that. As a non smoker it had never crossed her mind to bring matches. But there were no fire lighters, and there was no torch. There was nothing for it. Cursing herself for her own stupidity she realised she was going to have to explore outside in the dark.

Firmly putting all thoughts of the unexplained noise out of her head, she pulled on her jacket and gloves and with some reluctance she walked into the hall, unbolted the front door and pulled it open, fastening the latch back as she peered out into the darkness.

The wind caught her hair and pulled it back from her face, searing her cheeks. It was fresh and sharp with the scent of the sea and the pine woods which crowded across the grass towards her. She stood still for a moment, very conscious that she was silhouetted in the doorway. Reminding herself that there was no one watching she stared out at the path of light which ran from her feet in a great splash along the track before it dissipated between the trees. On either side of it the darkness was intense. She could see nothing beyond the muddy track with its windblown grasses and tangle of dead weeds.

Reluctantly, she stepped away from the door and began to walk along the front of the cottage, one hand extended cautiously in front of her touching the rough plastered walls. As her eyes grew used to the dark she could see the stars appearing one by one above her, and patches of cloud, pale against the blackness, and she became aware slowly of the sea shushing gently against the shingle in the distance and the wind sighing in the trees. She was straining her eyes as she reached the corner and peered round. Half way along the wall there was a small lean-to shed which must surely be some kind of fuel store. Moving a little faster as her confidence increased, she felt her feet grow wet in the grass.

Her fingers encountered the boards of the lean-to at last – overlapping, rough, splintery through her gloves. She groped her way around it until she came to the open doorway where she stopped, hesitating. The entrance gaped before her, the darkness intensely black and impenetrable after the luminous dark of the night, but she could smell the logs. Thick, resinous and warm, the scent swam up to her. Stooping, she groped through the doorway. Her hands met nothing but space. She reached out further and suddenly her fingers closed around something ice cold. A handle. Whatever it was slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground with a clatter. She stooped and picked it up. A spade. It was a spade. Leaning it against the wall, she took a cautious step forward, bending lower, and found herself right inside the shed. There at last her groping fingers encountered the tiers of stacked logs, their ends sharp, angled, their sides rough and rounded. Cautiously she pulled at one. The whole pile stirred and she leaped back. ‘From the top, you idiot.’ She found she had actually spoken out loud and the sound of her voice was somehow comforting. Straightening a little, she raised her hands, groping for the top of the pile and one by one she reached down four logs. That was all she could carry. Clutching them against her chest she stumbled out of the shed backwards and retraced her steps towards the corner of the wall. Once there the stream of cheerful light from the hall guided her back to the front door. She almost ran inside and throwing the logs down on the floor she turned and slammed the door shut, shooting the bolt home.

It was only as she looked down at the logs, covered in sawdust and cobwebs that she realised how frightened she had been. ‘You idiot,’ she said again. Shaking her head ruefully she began to pull off her anorak. What had she been afraid of? The silence? The wood? The dark?

She had been afraid of the dark as a child in her own little bedroom next to Anne’s in their Herefordshire farmhouse. Night after night she would lie awake, not daring to move, hardly daring to breathe, her eyes darting here and there around the room, looking – looking for what? There was never anything there. Never anything frightening, just that awful, overwhelming loneliness, the fear that everyone else had left the house and abandoned her. Or died. Had her mother guessed in the end, or had she confessed? She couldn’t remember now, but she did remember that her mother had given her a night light. It was a china owl, a white porcelain bird with great orange claws and huge enigmatic eyes. ‘You’ll scare the child to death with that thing,’ her father, a country doctor with no time for cosseting his own family, had scoffed when her mother produced it from the attic, but Kate had loved it. When the small night-light candle was lit inside it the whole bird glowed with creamy whiteness and its eyes came alive. It was a kind bird; a wise bird; and it watched over her and kept her company and kept the spooks at bay. When she was older the owl had remained unlit, an ornament now, but her fear, tightly rationalised and controlled, had remained. Sometimes, even when she was a student at university, she had lain in her room in the hall of residence, the sheet pulled up to her chin, her fingers clutched in the pillow she was hugging to her chest as she stared at the dark square of the window. The fear had gone now. Only one hint of it remained. She always opened the curtains at night. With them closed the darkness gave her claustrophobia. Jon had laughed at her, but he had conceded the open curtain. He liked it open because he loved to see the dawn creeping across the London roofs as the first blackbirds began to whistle from the television aerials across the city.

Well, that Kate was grown up now, and on her own and not afraid. Pulling herself together, she gathered up the logs and, walking through into the sitting room, she stacked them neatly in the fireplace beside the stove. Opening it again she peered in. The embers were very low. She looked at the logs thoughtfully. If she put one of those in it would just smother the small remaining sparks and put the whole thing out. She had no fire lighters. What she needed was newspaper and some dry, small twigs to rebuild the fire. She stared round.

In the kitchen the vegetable rack in the corner was lined with newspaper. She grabbed it, showering a residue of mud from long gone potatoes over the kitchen boards. There was enough to crumple into four good-sized wads. Stuffing them in around the log she lit it and closing the doors, slid open the damper. The sudden bright blaze was enormously satisfying but she held her breath. Would the paper burn and then leave the log to go out?

She glanced over her shoulder at the room and shivered. It had lost its appeal somehow. Her lap top computer and printer lying on the table rebuked her; the boxes of filing cards, the notebooks, the cardboard boxes full of books. She glanced at her watch. It was eight o’clock. She was hungry, she was tired and she was cold. A boiled egg, a cup of cocoa and a hot bath, if the wood-burner could be persuaded to work, and she would go to bed. Everything else could wait until morning. And daylight.

VII

It was bitterly cold and barely light. Well wrapped up in a Shetland sweater and thick jacket with two pairs of socks inside her boots and a pair of her younger brother’s gloves, Alison Lindsey stood staring at the cottage from the shelter of the trees. It was in darkness. Downstairs the curtains were drawn, but upstairs both the front windows which looked down across the garden appeared to be uncurtained. She frowned, then plucking up her courage she sprinted across the grass. Heading straight for the log shed she ducked inside and groped around in the darkness. After a second she gave an exclamation of annoyance. Her tools had been moved. She kicked crossly at the firewood and leaped back with a mixture of fright and malicious satisfaction as one of the piles began to slip. Dodging the cascading logs she watched until they had stopped moving, waiting for the noise to die away. The dust settled, but there was no sound from the cottage. ‘Lady Muck’s asleep,’ she whispered to herself and she gave a superior smile. She turned to the doorway again and then she saw her spade. It had been propped up in the corner.

Picking it up she peered out into the silent dawn. It was well before sunrise. The morning was damp and ice cold and there were still long dark shadows across the sea, stretching out into the black mist.

Running lightly she headed across the shingle and leaped down into the hollow on the seaward side of the dune. Her dune.

The tide in the night, she saw with satisfaction, had not been very high. The sea wrack on the shore, still wet with spume, was several feet short of her excavation and had come nowhere near the place where she was digging. Her tongue protruding slightly from between her teeth she set to, cutting the soft sand into sections and scooping it away from the side of the dune. From somewhere in the darkness along the shore she heard the scream of a gull.

Her hands were frozen after only a few moments in spite of the thick gloves and already her headache had come back. With an irritable sigh, she paused to rest, leaning on her spade as she blew on her wool-covered knuckles. The sand was crumbling where she had attacked it and as she watched, another section fell away by itself. With it it brought something large and curved and shiny. Throwing down the spade she bent over it and gently worked the object free of the sand. It was another section of pottery. Much larger this time. Large enough to hold the curve of the bowl or vase of which it had once formed a part. Through her gloves, as she dusted away the damp sand fragments, she could feel the engraved decoration. She stared at it for a long time, then carefully she put it to one side and attacked the sand with renewed vigour. Minutes later something else began to appear. It was thin and bent and a corroded green colour, like a rusty bit of old metal. Forgetting the pain in her temples she pulled at it in excitement. Thick as a man’s thumb it was several inches long, with a rough knob at one end. Turning it over in her hands she stared at it for a long time, then, scrambling out of the hollow of her sheltered digging place she ran over the shingle towards the sea. The shingle was wet and smelled of salt and weed, the night’s harvest of shells and dead crabs lying amongst the stones. Nearby she could see the gulls picking amongst them. Crouching down, her feet almost in the water, she swished the object back and forth in the edge of the tide and then she stared at it again. It was no cleaner. The greenness was a part of it. She took off her glove and ran a cautious finger over it, feeling a certain symmetrical roughness on the cold metal as though at some point in the distant past it had been carved, though now the incrustations of time and sea and sand had covered it forever.

Excited, she turned back towards the dune and stopped in her tracks. A freak gust of wind had risen. It had whipped the sand up and spun it into a vortex which danced for a moment across the beach and then dropped back to nothing. Behind her the first rim of the sun had appeared above the horizon. For a moment she hesitated, frowning. She was frightened, with the strange feeling that there was someone nearby, watching her. Shrugging, she huddled into her jacket, wedging her find into the pocket as she stared round. If there was someone there it would be a friend. Joe Farnborough from the farm, or Bill Norcross if he had decided to go for an early walk, or even Lady Muck herself or someone out walking their dog along the tide line.

Her spade was still lying where it had fallen in the sand and she took an uncertain step towards it. The skin was prickling on the back of her neck. It was a strange feeling, one she couldn’t remember experiencing before, but instinctively she knew what it was. She was being watched! The words of a poem flitted suddenly through her head. Her mother had read it to her once when she was very small. The blood of the small, impressionable Alison had curdled as she listened wide-eyed, and the words had stuck. It was the only poem she had ever learned.

When sunset lights are burning low,

While tents are pitched and camp-fires glow,

Steals o’er us, ere the stars appear,

The furtive sense of Jungle Fear …

Primitive fear. Fear of danger which you cannot see.

She licked her lips nervously. ‘Silly cow,’ she said out loud. It was herself she meant. ‘Stupid nerd. Move. Now. What’s the matter with you?’

The sun had risen further. A red stain began to spread into the sea and imperceptibly it grew lighter. She clenched her fists and took a step towards the spade. Her mouth had gone dry and she was shaking. With cold. Of course it was with cold. Gritting her teeth she jumped back into the hollow and grabbed the spade, holding it in front of her with two hands. The wind had begun to blow again and it lifted the skirt of her jacket, billowing it around her, whipping her hair into her eyes. The dust was spinning again, rising near her feet. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her wrist. The sand was lifting, condensing. Almost it was the shape of a human figure.

Slowly she backed away from the dune and, scrambling out of the hollow, she began to move towards the cottage. Seconds later she broke into a run. Hurtling across the lawn she dived down the side of the building, threw the spade into the shed and pelted down the track towards the trees.

In the dune the piece of red-glazed pottery lay forgotten, covered already by a new scattering of sand.

VIII

Kate lay for a moment disorientated, staring up at the heavily-beamed ceiling, wondering where she was. Her dream had been so vivid, so threatening. Huddling down into a tight ball under the bedclothes she tried to piece it together, to remember what had been so frightening, but already she was having difficulty recalling the details and at last with some relief she gave up the attempt and, sitting up, she gazed around the unfamiliar room. It was ice cold. A diffuse grey light like no light she had seen before filtered in from between the undrawn curtains. It was eerie; luminous. Dragging the quilt around her she climbed out of bed and going to the east-facing window, she peered out. The sea was slate black, shadowed with mist and above it a low sun hung like a dark crimson ball shedding no reflection and little light. It was a cold, unenticing scene without perspective. She shivered and turned back into the room. Gathering up her clothes she ran down the stairs on ice cold feet and looked into the living room. There the curtains were still closed. After drawing them back she opened the doors of the woodburner and stared at it, depressed. The fire was out and the metal cold.

‘Sod it!’ She looked down at the single log. It was barely scorched from last night’s paper blaze. To light it she would need firelighters, twigs, more paper …

Of course there would be no hot water either. Shivering, she abandoned the idea of washing and pulled on a pair of jeans. Thick socks and a heavy sweater and she was ready to forage once more in the log shed.

The outside world was bitterly cold. The garden – no more than a piece of rough turf and a couple of small bare flower beds – appeared to surround the cottage in a small compact circle; beyond it in the cold early-morning light the grass grew wilder and more lumpy and matted before almost at once giving way to the dunes and shingle banks which backed the sea.

As she stepped out of the front door a movement at the side of the cottage caught her eye and she stopped, astonished to find that her heart was beating faster than normal again. The fear in her dream was still with her and the silence and emptiness of the woods unnerved her. Forcing herself to walk outside she peered around and realised, relieved, that what she had seen was a rabbit. Three rabbits. They all straightened for a moment as she appeared, their ears upright, their eyes bulging with terror and then they bounded back into the trees. She smiled, amused and not a little embarrassed by her own fear. She was going to have to take herself in hand.

In the doorway of the shed she stopped. The spade was lying across the threshold. Stooping she picked it up. There were clods of wet muddy sand attached to the shoulders of the blade. Someone had used that spade recently – certainly since she had come out to the shed last night. She surveyed the woods but as far as she could see they were silent and still. Even the rabbits had gone.

Shrugging her shoulders, she gathered up another armful of logs and, this time spotting the pile of neatly stacked kindling in the corner of the shed, filled her pockets with twigs and small slivers of wood to help light the fire.

Hot coffee and a blazing furnace in the woodburner did much to restore her optimism as did the discovery that there was an electric immersion heater in a cupboard in the bathroom as a backup to the more esoteric uncertainties of hot water from logs. She ate a bowl of cereal and then set about unpacking in earnest.

Several times as she glanced through the windows she noticed that the day was clearing. The mist was thinning and the sun had gained a little in strength. By the time her bags and boxes were empty and she was storing them in the spare bedroom, the sea was a brilliant blue to match the sky.

Turning from the curtainless window her eye was caught by a stack of canvasses behind the door which she hadn’t noticed earlier. They stood, face to the wall, in a patch of deep shadow. Curious, she turned one towards her. The painting was of the sea – a strangely surrealist, nightmare sea. With a grimace she pulled out another canvas. It repeated the theme as did the next and the next. Then came two more, scenes of the cottage itself, one in the autumn where a bland chocolate-box house was surrounded by a curtain of flame, the other a representation of the house as it would look beneath the nightmare sea. She stared at the latter for a long time and then with a shudder she stacked it back against the wall. They were all painted by the same hand, and a hand which commanded a great deal of talent and power, but she did not like them. They were cruel; twisted in their conception.

Closing the door with a shiver she ran down the stairs and back into the sun-filled living room where her books and papers were laid out on the table ready to start work. Putting the paintings firmly out of her mind she stood looking down at the table.

The book was there, in her head, ready to start and it was going to be even better than Jane. Kate smiled as she pulled her notepad towards her and switched on her word processor.

The knock on the front door two hours later took her by surprise. She had completely forgotten Bill.

‘Hi!’ He grinned at her as she led the way into the living room. ‘How are you? Ready for lunch?’

She stared at him, miles away, reluctant to lose the mood, aching to go on writing.

Bill was watching her. ‘Penny for them,’ he said softly. ‘You didn’t hear a word I said, did you? I’ve boobed. I’ve intruded on the writer with her muse.’

‘Oh, Bill, I’m sorry. Of course I heard you.’ Kate dragged herself back to the present and gave herself a little shake. ‘Blow the muse; she can go back in her box for a few hours. And yes, that’s a super idea. I’d love lunch.’

The walk through the wood was thoroughly enjoyable and eagerly she looked around, noting the crisp air, the soft muddy track, the whispering fragrant pines, the winter-dead oak, and birch and hazel bright with young catkins, as she plodded beside him, her hands in her pockets, throwing off her preoccupation with the background of the poet’s father, mad Jack Byron, in order to recount her adventures of the night before.

‘That’s typical of Greg, I’m afraid, not to tell you about the fire or leave you any logs,’ Bill said, shaking his head. ‘There’s a petty streak to him. He’s angry about having to give up the cottage for you.’ He kicked out at a rotten branch which lay half across the track.

‘I didn’t realise he lived there.’

‘Oh yes. Greg is a brilliant painter. He dropped out of university about six years ago, halfway through getting a Fine Art degree, came home here and more or less squatted. That was before Roger had to give up work – I don’t know if you realise, but he’s got cancer.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Anyway, the Lindseys indulged Greg disgracefully, there is no other word for it, and I think Roger gave him some sort of allowance, but when he had to stop work himself there were a few heavy hints that Greg might get off his backside and get a job to help the family coffers. He was impervious to them all, I gather. He has lofty views on the sacredness of talent and the fact that the rest of the world owes him a living so he can indulge that talent. Poor Diana, I don’t know how she’s coped until now. The idea of renting the cottage did not go down well with old Leonardo, as you can imagine. I gather he was dragged out kicking and screaming. So, don’t take his animosity personally. But don’t expect him to come calling with bunches of flowers either.’

Kate frowned. ‘You might have told me all this before, Bill.’

‘Why? Would you have changed your mind about coming?’

She shook her head. ‘No, but it explains a lot.’ She paused. ‘I found some paintings in the bedroom. He must have forgotten them.’

‘I doubt it. If he left them there, he left them there for a reason. Which means he wanted you to see them.’ Bill glanced at her. ‘His paintings are pretty grim, to my mind.’

She nodded. ‘I didn’t like them. There was one which showed the cottage under the sea. It was –’ she hesitated, trying to find the right word ‘– morbid – threatening.’

‘Take no notice. We’ll ask Diana to take them away.’

‘It seems wimpish to make a fuss.’

‘Not at all. You’re as much of an artist as he is, remember. A better one, because you are disciplined. And you are entitled to feel as sensitive and touchy as he is.’ He grinned. ‘Are you feeling sensitive and touchy?’

‘Not in the least. Hungry covers it rather better.’

‘Good. In that case, let’s find your car and go eat.’

The farmhouse was empty. After a cursory glance through the windows to convince themselves that there really was no one at home they turned their attention to the barn. Kate’s Peugeot was there, neatly parked next to an old Volvo estate.

‘Diana’s,’ Bill said. ‘They can’t have gone far if they are all packed into that fiendish Land Rover, not if they value their teeth.’

By the time they had reached the end of the track and gained the metalled road, Kate was beginning to think he was right – and that perhaps when her next royalty cheque came she should sacrifice a few teeth in the interest of her car’s springs and buy an ancient four-wheel drive of her own for the duration of her stay.

They ordered curry at The Black Swan, a delightful long, low, pink-painted pub a mile or two from the lane, and sat down pleasantly near to a huge inglenook fireplace with a gentle smouldering log which filled the room with the scent of spicy apple. Save for the smiling pink-cheeked girl behind the bar they were the only people there. ‘So. Are you going to like it at Redall?’ Bill sat down on the high backed settle, and sticking his legs out towards the fire he gave a great sigh of contentment. He raised his pint glass and drank deeply and appreciatively.

Kate nodded. ‘It’s the perfect place to work.’

‘The loneliness doesn’t worry you?’

She shook her head. ‘I must say it was a bit quiet last night. Just the sea. But I’ll get used to it. It will be wonderful for writing.’ Picking up her own glass – she had opted for a Scotch and water – she looked at Bill for a moment. In a thick brown cable-knit sweater and open-necked shirt he reminded her faintly of a rumpled sheepdog. ‘Did you speak to Jon at all before he left, Bill?’

He glanced at her over the rim of his glass. ‘Only once. He rang to ask me if I knew where you were going.’

‘Did you tell him?’ She looked away, not wanting him to see how much she wanted him to say yes.

‘No.’ There was a thoughtful pause as he sipped his lager. ‘We had a few words on various themes related to male chauvinism – his – and misplaced chivalry – mine – and professional jealousy – all of us – and at that point I told him to bugger off to America and let you get on with your life. Did I do wrong?’

‘No.’ She didn’t sound very certain.

She was thinking of their last meeting. Jon had been about to leave for the airport. The taxi was at the door, his cases stacked nearby and she, not wanting to say goodbye, not wanting to see him again before he went in case her resolution wavered, had arrived back at the flat thinking he had already gone. For a moment she had been tempted to turn and run – but he had seen her and they were after all both grownups. For a moment they had looked at each other, then she had smiled and reached up to kiss him on the cheek. ‘Take care. Have a wonderful time. I hope it’s all a great success.’ For a moment she had thought he would turn away without a word. Then he had smiled at her awkwardly. ‘You take care too, Kate, my love. Don’t get too wrapped up in old George. And remember to look after yourself.’ They were both hurting; miserable; stiff-necked. And that was it. Picking up his cases he had walked out to the cab and climbed in without a word or a backward glance. There was no way that she could know that there were tears in his eyes.

‘I had an Irish grandmother, Kate,’ Bill said after a moment’s sympathetic silence. ‘She was always full of useful aphorisms. One of her favourites was: “if it is meant to be it will be.” I think it just about fits the case.’

Kate laughed. ‘You’re right. We need a break from each other at the moment.’ She glanced up as a waitress appeared with their knives and forks, wrapped in sugar-pink napkins, a huge bowl of mango chutney and large pepper and salt sellers contrived to look like a pair of old boots. ‘But if he phones again, perhaps you might tell him where I am this time.’ She caught Bill’s eye and they both smiled comfortably.

‘Is there a woman in your life, Bill?’ She hadn’t meant it to come out quite so baldly as she sought for a change of subject, but he didn’t seem put out.

‘Only Aunty Beeb at the moment – the goddess I work for. There was one once, but she buggered off too.’ He paused reflectively, taking another deep drink from his glass. ‘You are not offering, I take it. Flattered and tempted though I would be by such a possibility, I think it would be bad for both of us.’

‘I’m not offering. But I need a friend. Someone who will walk through the woods now and then and drag me to a pub for a curry.’

‘Done. But not alas for a while after today. I’ve got a tight schedule until Christmas.’

She was astonished at how devastated she felt at his words. She had known he was going back to London and yet somehow she had counted on him being there again next weekend.

‘Want another Scotch?’ He had been watching her face closely and saw something of the loneliness which had shown in her eyes for a moment.

She nodded and held out her glass. ‘Then we can drink to Lord Byron. By the time I see you again, he will be, with a lot of luck, several chapters long.’

After dropping Bill at Colchester station she took the opportunity to drive on into the town, curious about the place which would be her nearest large centre for the next few months. Pevsner, in the edition of the book she had briefly consulted in the London Library, had waxed lyrical about it, but nineteen-sixties red-brick shopping centres now seemed to vie with nineteen-eighties glass and concrete where much of what he had described must have been. Saddened, she turned her attention at last to the castle museum.

The huge squat building was shadowed already from the late afternoon sun as she made her way across the bridge and inside the great door to buy her ticket. The place was strangely empty. In the distance she could hear the disembodied, dramatic voice of a video loop – the sound effects and urgency of the narrative strangely out of place amongst the glass cases beneath the high-beamed roof of the castle. She walked slowly around the ground floor exhibits gazing at Bronze Age and Iron Age artefacts, gradually growing closer to the sound.

For several minutes she stood watching the video – which told of the Romans in Colchester – then turning away, she began slowly to climb the stairs. At the top were Roman exhibits, life-size models, colourful, larger than life panoramic pictures on the walls, and then another video enactment, this time of Boudicca’s attack and the sack of the town.

Poor Boudicca. Kate wandered round slowly studying the exhibits, piecing together her life: the wife of Prasutagus; her children; the political background of first-century Britain; her husband’s death; the rape of her daughters and her humiliation as she was flogged by a Roman – the final insult after years of unrest and dissatisfaction in a country under foreign occupation, which caused the revolt which had nearly ended the Roman occupation of Britain. What a story her life made. Suddenly Kate found herself watching the video with heightened excitement. What a biography it would make; what a book, when George Byron was finished … The burning of Colchester, the rampage of Boudicca’s forces across Essex and Hertfordshire as they made their way towards London, and the final hours when she realised that all had failed and she took her own life. And Colchester was the centre of it all – a city where the flames had burned so hot that nearly two thousand years later a layer of blackened death was still clearly visible in the foundations of the town.

She watched the video through twice, alone in the darkened booth – seeing the huge sketched shapes of the warriors, hearing their shouts and screams, then she stood up and left, intensely aware suddenly of the vaults far beneath the castle which were all that remained apparently of the Temple of Claudius – the temple Boudicca had burned to the ground with most of the population of the town inside it.

She recognised this feeling: the tight, bone-tingling, breathless excitement as ideas jostled in her head, and under her breath she swore. She had had this feeling before, after she finished Jane; not until she had finished Jane. To get it now, while she was still at the beginning of Lord of Darkness meant she was going to suffer months if not years of suppressed, hidden frustration and worry in case someone else had the idea first; in case her publisher didn’t like the idea; in case the idea took root in her sleep and developed and began to encroach on the work in progress.

Shaking her head in a small gesture of irritation she moved on past the exhibits. How could a woman – any woman – however hurt and humiliated, order the slaughter of other women, of children, of babies? What kind of person was she, this remote queen who offered human sacrifice to her gods before going to war?

She stopped abruptly. She was standing in front of a statue of a Roman citizen and her eye had been caught by the name. Frowning, she read the inscription: ‘MARCUS SEVERUS SECUNDUS, one of the very few recorded survivors of the Boudiccan massacre. Instrumental in the rebuilding of Colchester after its sack in A.D. 60, he died full of years and honour and was buried next to his wife Augusta in the year A.D. 72. Their graves were excavated in 1986. See exhibit in case 14.’

So this was Redall’s former owner. She stared hard at the stone face of Marcus with his patrician nose, slightly chipped, his warrior stance, the carefully sculpted folds of his toga and she wondered what kind of a man he had been. He had been one of those who had survived the massacre and returned to pick up the threads of his life. She felt another sudden frisson of excitement. Had he seen Boudicca? Could he have described the warrior queen of the Iceni with her flowing red hair and her massy torcs, her body armour and her war chariot?

She jumped suddenly as a disembodied voice, echoing around the castle, announced that the museum would soon be closing and she gave Marcus a last regretful glance. But not too regretful. She had the feeling she would be coming back to see him again.

IX

The youngest son of the late King, he had stood head and shoulders above his brothers and he knew he had been the favourite. His love of learning, his memory, his wit had marked him out as a child for study and initiation. His priesthood gave him power. His royal blood marked him for destiny. That was why he had been given lands and authority, and why he was trusted as advisor at Camelodunum to the Roman settlers, even though his brothers led revolt in the west. He wore Roman clothes; he spoke their language; he assimilated their learning and their ways. And he had fallen in love with one of their women. But he hated them and he bided his time.

He frowned when he saw the detested overlords raising their temple in the heart of Camelodunum: a temple to Claudius; a temple to a man who had declared himself a god. But he kept his views silent. One day the time would come, one day the Romans would be expelled from the land of his ancestors. When that day came, he would kill Claudia’s husband and he would take her back to his hall. But until then, ever the diplomat, he would smile.

His duties as druid were light. He was royal, rich, in love. The gods would understand. He would serve them in due time when the bluebells had faded and the blood ran more slowly in his veins.

The old priests disapproved. They frowned and shook their heads first at him, then at the signs from the gods; the gods who despised the Romans who would venerate a man and make him one of them.

He did not know that the gods, too, were growing angry.

It was almost dark as Kate drove down the track and into the barn and parked her car next to Diana’s Volvo once more. The farmhouse, she had noticed at once and with a strange sense of loss, was in complete darkness. She had not realised until that moment how much she had been counting on being asked in to sit by their cosy fire and have a cup of tea before she set out on the walk through the wood to her cottage.

On the drive back she had found a farm shop open where she had managed to buy some bread and milk, crumbly local cheese and Essex honey and, to her great delight, some firelighters and matches.

Hefting her plastic carrier over her shoulder she was already on the track when she stopped. The torch was still in the car. Turning back she pulled open the barn door once more and, unlocking the Peugeot she rummaged in the glove compartment. The torch was there, and – experimentally she flashed it up into the high rafters – it worked. Comforted, she locked up again and set off at a determined pace into the woods.

The track ran straight for a few hundred yards and then curved eastwards, narrowing until there was only room for the rutted marks of the Land Rover’s wheels. Her feet slipped and she found she needed the torch to see where to put them in the mud. The evening was very still. There was no wind and the trees were silent. In the distance she heard the warbling call of a curlew from the marshes. The sound echoed in the falling darkness and was answered by the shriek of an owl. She clutched her bag more tightly, her eyes riveted to the track.

May the gods of all eternity curse you, Marcus Severus Secundus, and bring your putrid body and your rotten soul to judgement for what you have done here this day …

The woods were still silent, the trees unmoving. The words, as clear and well enunciated as those of a BBC presenter, had been inside her own head. Kate stopped dead, a sheen of sweat on her skin, her heart hammering in her ears. She stared round, her eyes straining into the darkness between the tall tree trunks, very conscious of the smell of rotting wood and damp, dark earth which surrounded her.

Stupid. The darkness and the silence after the celluloid drama of the museum and the excitement of the new idea had set her imagination working overtime, that was all. She resumed walking, a little more quickly this time, her torch clutched so tightly in her hand that her fingers grew numb.

When the cottage at last came into view she was breathless. Fumbling in her pocket for her key she let herself in and turned on the light, then she put her shopping bag down on the kitchen table, ran upstairs and grabbed one of her empty boxes from the spare bedroom. Dragging it after her she went straight outside again and made for the log shed. Before she did anything else and before she lost her nerve completely she would stock up with firewood.

Flashing the torch beam around the small shed she piled logs into her box, and then a huge heap of kindling. The shed was very neat, the ranks of logs undisturbed beneath their net of spiders’ webs save for a few that had fallen at the end of the pile, the spade still leaning where she had left it in the corner. With one last look round she turned off the torch and returned it to her pocket. She needed both hands for the box. Hefting it up with a groan she made her way out into the cold garden, conscious of the brooding woods so close to the front of the cottage. It was impossible to run with the box. As swiftly as she could she walked back indoors and then she dropped it on the hall floor. Turning she slammed the door shut and shot the bolt home.

Safe. She closed her eyes and laughed quietly to herself, embarrassed, alone as she was, by her own stupidity. Picking up the box again she hauled it into the living room and put it neatly by the stove. Then, drawing the curtains against the darkness she went back to the kitchen and put on the kettle. The phone rang as she was waiting for it to boil.

‘Kate, my dear. Just checking to see that everything is all right.’ It was Roger Lindsey. ‘I’m afraid we’ve been out most of the day so I thought I would give you a quick call to make sure you have everything you need.’

‘Thank you. I’m fine.’ She took a deep breath, astonished at how pleased she was to hear the sound of his voice. ‘I came by earlier to leave my car again so I saw you were out.’

‘We were having lunch with some friends in Woodbridge. Nice people. They had read your book.’

‘Nice people indeed.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Roger, tell me, how do I make this woodburner thing stay alight all night?’

She heard an exclamation of impatience. ‘Didn’t Greg show you? I’m sorry, my dear. Those things take a bit of getting used to, but once you’ve got the hang of it you can keep it going for months without it going out. Do you want me to come up and show you?’

She shouldn’t drag him over when he was ill, when he had been out all day and must be tired, but suddenly the thought of a visitor was very tempting. ‘Would it be an awful imposition? I’ve got a good whisky here.’

She heard him laugh. ‘I’m on my way.’

It was scarcely fifteen minutes later that she saw the headlights of the Land Rover appear from the trees. Roger climbed out. ‘Greg’s away for a day or two. I’ll give him a good bollocking when he gets back. He was supposed to show you how everything works.’

‘He must have forgotten. I had so much stuff to bring in.’ She closed the door behind him and led the way into the living room. She had put the whisky bottle on the table with two glasses. She poured, then she watched as he knelt before the stove and pulled the doors open. ‘Start with a good blaze, like this,’ he instructed. Magically a fire appeared beneath his thin hands. ‘Then put on one or two of the logs. Like so.’ He pushed two huge logs into the small cavity and miraculously they fitted. Then he closed the doors. ‘Now, leave it for a while with the dampers open like this. Once the fire has caught properly – about two-thirds of the way down that glass, I should say – we close them tight. The secret is to get it burning slowly and steadily and then to cut off as much air as possible. You have to stack the logs in really tight last thing – that’s an art you must practise I’m afraid, but you’ll soon get the hang of it. It keeps this place really snug once it’s working properly.’

He took the glass she offered him and sat down in one of the armchairs, gazing round the room. ‘You’ve made it look very comfortable.’

The tall, thin man sprawling in the chair in his shabby cords and old tweed jacket was so reassuring and normal that Kate found the wave of nervous loneliness which had hit her earlier was receding fast. ‘I gather your son used to live here. I’m sorry my coming here has upset him,’ she said as she sat down opposite him.

‘He’s no business to be upset.’ For a moment a shadow passed across Roger’s face. ‘He knows we need the money. Sorry if that sounds crude, but it’s a fact of life. And it’s nice for us to have a congenial neighbour.’ He smiled comfortably. ‘As you’ve gathered, it’s fairly isolated up here. And to that end, Diana has instructed me to ask if you would like to come and have some supper with us on Wednesday. We quite understand if you’d rather not because you are working, but –’

‘I should love to.’ She replied so quickly she surprised even herself. ‘I shall look forward to it immensely.’

‘Good.’ His smile was expansive, deepening the network of wrinkles around his eyes. ‘You’ll have the pleasure or otherwise of meeting our other two children, Allie and Patrick.’ Draining his glass he stood up. ‘If there’s nothing else I suppose I’d better go home. Di will have supper ready soon.’

Stay, she wanted to say. Please, stay and talk to me. She liked his presence in the room. It was comforting. Solid. And safe. She said nothing. Smiling, she showed him to the door. ‘I’ll report back on my success or otherwise with the stove when I see you.’

‘Do that.’

She watched as the Land Rover backed round and headed back up the track, the headlights bucking against the trees as it slid between the ruts. In a moment it was out of sight.

Closing the door and bolting it again she walked back into the living room. As though recognising the hand of a master the woodburner had settled down to produce a satisfyingly hot glow which was already warming the room. She looked round, pleased. Although Roger had gone something of the friendliness he had brought with him had remained; basking in it, she would make herself some supper, read a little, listen to some music, have a hot bath and go to bed early. Tomorrow she would spend the day with Lord Byron.

X

In the stillness of the night the tide lapped imperceptibly higher along the beach, round the headland and slowly, oh so slowly, into the backwaters of the estuary, licking at the mud, floating strands of trailing grasses and weeds, curling round the toes of sleeping geese and ducks. Rising.

In the dune the sand had dried. It was brittle, friable, ready to fall. Beneath it, only a centimetre down now, was the clay – clay which was plastic, impervious to air or water, and in the clay was the peat which held preserved the remains of four human bodies.

XI

She had been sitting at the word processor for two hours and she had not noticed that it was getting light. Now, arms and shoulders cramped and her head throbbing from her intense concentration, Kate sat back, took off her glasses and, dropping them beside her notes, stared out of the window. The mist had receded to leave a sunrise of breathtaking clarity. The narrow vee of sea visible between the shingle banks from her carefully positioned table glittered with blinding beauty. It was more than anyone could resist; besides, she needed a break. Donning jacket, scarf and boots she pulled open the front door and emerged into an ice cold wind. Looking around she took a deep breath of pure delight. This was a place where Byron himself would have felt at home.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean – roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain …

The beach was still wet from the receding tide as she tramped northwards along it, murmuring the lines from ‘Childe Harold’, her head ducked against the sting of the wind and the glare, her cheeks tingling beneath the whipping strings of hair as they pulled free of her scarf. The words weren’t quite right, of course. This wasn’t an ocean and it was neither all that deep nor dark, but still the mood was right. It was exhilarating. She wanted to jump and run and dance, but the shingle and soft sand precluded all but the most undignified gallop. Stopping at last, exhausted, she turned and began to retrace her steps. With the wind and glare behind her she could slow down and appreciate the different colours and textures of the water: where the sand rose near the surface it was pale green, even yellow. Further out streaks of deep turquoise melded with grey and black and the intense sapphire blue of a child’s painting of the sea. In the distance the shingle gave way to muddy sand and she could see dunlin and redshank at the water’s edge. Save for them she appeared to be the only being alive in the world.

She came level with the cottage, appreciating from here how sheltered it was behind the shingle banks, only a narrow section of its face visible behind the waving grasses and heaps of sand. In front of her, beyond the dunes, the beach swept away around the corner. There a narrow inlet led into the shallow, muddy waters of Redall Bay with its network of small islands and tidal creeks.

By the last of the dunes she stopped. Part of it appeared to have fallen onto the sand, and in the hollow on its seaward side there were signs of recent digging. Curious, she walked towards it, her boots slipping in the deep soft mixture of stones and mud and sand. The top section, out of sight of the cottage, had had a neat transverse slice removed from it. About ten feet long and two feet deep the interlocking grasses had been sectioned away and below it the sand had been scooped loosely into piles. Jumping down into the hollow she stared at the exposed wall of the dune. The resulting scar in the sand looked too regular and neat to be the result of a child’s game; and it had certainly not been caused by the tide, although further along the cut had been lengthened and randomly enlarged by a muddy landslip where tell-tale strands of weed and a scattering of whelk shells betrayed a recent high tide propelled by an easterly wind.

Intrigued, Kate ran her hand lightly over the sand face. Who had been digging here, and why? Was it something to do with sea defences? She turned and looked back at the beach. The receding tide looked gentle and benevolent now, but she was under no illusions about the force it could muster if wind and moon were right.

She was about to scramble out of the hollow to resume her walk when her eye was caught by something shiny sticking out of the sand. It looked like a piece of pottery. She picked it up and examined it, then, frowning, she looked at it more closely. It was thin, fine, red, decorated with a raised pattern and it looked very like the Samian ware she had seen in the museum only yesterday. But that was impossible. She turned and surveyed the sand face again. Was this some sort of abandoned excavation? She stared down at the piece of pottery in her hand almost guiltily. Perhaps she shouldn’t have touched it. On the other hand it had been lying in the loose spoil, obviously overlooked. With another high tide it would have been buried and lost. Pulling her scarf off her hair she wrapped the piece carefully and put it reverently in her pocket, then she turned and examined the exposed sand again. It was in a very crumbly state. The lightest touch dislodged another shower of soil. A few feet to her left she spotted something dark protruding from it. Cautiously she touched it. Metal. Scraping at the sand with her fingers she tried to see what it was without disturbing it. The narrow twisted neck of metal stuck out at right angles from the sand. She must ask the Lindseys. They would know who had been excavating here, and why they had stopped. She eyed the piece of metal longingly. If she touched it and it was of archaeological interest then she might be destroying valuable evidence – on the other hand another tide might remove it even more irrevocably. As she was standing there, trying to make up her mind what to do, a small crack appeared of its own accord in the top of the dune. As she watched a lump of wet sand broke away and fell at her feet. A minute later another six-inch section fell, taking the metal object with it. She bent and picked it up. Twisted, corroded, the metal was heavy and cold in her hand. She could not begin to guess what metal it was. Not gold certainly. Bronze, perhaps, or even silver. She examined it in excitement and awe. In all probability she was the first person to touch it for over a thousand years – perhaps two, perhaps more. It was a torc.

MY LOVE

The voice in her head had spoken so loudly she thought it was real. Dropping the torc she put her hands to her ears, looking round.

There was no one there. An oystercatcher was plodding slowly along the tide line near her, dipping its beak into the sand.

She could feel her heart beginning to hammer in her ears again, as it had in the woods in the dark the night before. Taking a deep breath she bent and picked up the piece of twisted metal, then she scrambled out of the hollow. She stared round, her arm across her eyes to hold back her streaming hair, loose now she had removed the scarf. There was still no one in any direction as far as she could see. Besides the voice had been inside her own head.

Taking a deep breath she turned towards the cottage. Get a grip on yourself, Kennedy. You’re imagining things, she told herself sternly. Too much fresh air, that’s your trouble.

The panic had gone almost as soon as it had come. Out here in broad daylight, in the brilliant sunshine and the light, tossing wind with birds patrolling unconcerned along the tide line, her moment of terror seemed absurd. It was imagination, that was all. A visit to the museum, a new preoccupation with Boudicca and the events of nineteen hundred years ago, together with the isolated situation and already she was having hallucinations. Strong coffee would soon sort that out.

Slightly faster than she would normally have walked she retraced her steps towards the cottage. Only once did she look back. There in the dazzle off the sea a sand devil whirled in the hollow where she had been standing. She watched it for a moment. It looked almost like a figure. Then it disappeared.

Letting herself in out of the wind, she shook her hair back from her face and putting her finds down on the kitchen table she put the kettle on even before she removed her jacket and boots. While the kettle was boiling she went to the phone but there was no answer from the Lindseys.

Picking up her coffee and her two artifacts she carried them through into the living room and put them down on her work table. Automatically she turned on the word processor. Waiting for it to summon up her programme she picked up the torc and examined it again. It was large – large enough to go around the neck of a full grown man at a guess, and still heavy in spite of, or perhaps because of, its corrosion. She stared at it for a long time then carefully she placed it on the windowsill before sitting down before her keyboard.

When she next looked up it was nearly one o’clock.

This time Diana was in when she phoned. Her query about the digging on the beach was greeted by a moment of embarrassed silence. ‘You were there this morning, you say?’ she asked cautiously.

‘I was walking on the beach.’

‘Of course. I think the place you’re talking about is where my daughter has been doing some digging. It’s for an archaeological project at school. It’s not a designated site of any kind.’

‘I see.’ Kate frowned. She could hear the defensiveness in the other woman’s voice. ‘It’s just that there seemed to be signs of some kind of ancient usage –’ Her eyes strayed towards the doorway into the hall. She couldn’t see the windowsill where her finds were lying. ‘I felt that probably someone qualified ought to take a look at it. It could be an important site.’

‘I think you’ll find Alison has that in hand. It’s her project entirely, Kate.’ Diana’s voice took on an unaccustomed firmness. ‘Please leave it to her.’

And keep your nose out! Kate muttered as she put down the phone. She wandered back into the sitting room and stood looking down at the metal torc. If Alison was going to inform the museum then that was fine. She would show them her two trophies at the same time. She picked up the piece of twisted metal and examined it once more. It was badly corroded and bent, but the basic design of intertwined strands of metal wire was clearly visible. She scratched at it cautiously with her fingernail. A pale gleam appeared. She hesitated, then she scratched at it again, this time harder. The faint scratch showed a distinctly silvery sparkle. It was silver. She was holding a silver torc.

I CURSE YOU, MARCUS SEVERUS, FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE HERE THIS DAY

The voice was so sudden and so loud she dropped the torc onto the table. Frantically she shook her head. The sound had been inside her ears; it came from her brain. From her head. From her soul. Frightened she stared round the room. Then taking a deep breath she picked up the twisted metal again. It was very cold beneath her fingers. As cold as it had been when she first picked it out of the wet sand.

‘This is stupid.’ She said the words out loud, and her own voice sounded light and insubstantial in the empty room. She carried the torc and the piece of pottery to the small table in the corner on which the lamp stood and pulling out the drawer she laid them both in it. Closing it firmly she turned the key.

Auditory hallucination is a condition engendered by various states of mind and various physical conditions. She had read about it in one of Anne’s books. But which one of them, if any, applied to her? Picking up the bottle of Scotch she walked through into the kitchen and firmly closed the door behind her. The first thing she could do was restore her blood sugar levels to normal. Perhaps a cooked lunch would dispel whatever it was which was causing this to happen.

She was sitting at the small kitchen table, with a book propped up before her, eating baked beans on toast covered in melted cheese, when there was a loud knock at the front door. Pushing her plate away reluctantly she went to open it.

A girl stood on the doorstep, dressed in jeans and a bright blue anorak, her blonde pony-tailed hair blowing wildly in the wind.

‘I’ve come to tell you to keep away from my dig.’ The green eyes were furious, the face unsmiling. ‘Mum says you’ve been poking around in the dune. Well don’t. Just because you’ve rented this place it doesn’t give you any right to go poking around in other people’s affairs. Keep away from it.’ The young face was pale and strained. Her headache had been worse this morning, too bad to go to school, too bad to get up until Diana had told her what was happening out at the dune.

‘You must be Alison.’ Kate raised an eyebrow but, firmly suppressing the angry response which was her automatic reaction to the girl’s rudeness, she merely said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interfere in your excavation. Of course I won’t go near it again if you’d rather I didn’t.’

‘Please don’t.’ Alison scowled.

‘You’ve told the museum about your finds, I gather.’

‘I’m going to soon.’ The girl’s chin was set determinedly. She was very like her elder brother, Kate decided suddenly. They were a good-looking family, but obviously not noted for their charm. ‘I’m writing it up first and taking photos and things.’

‘Good.’ Kate smiled. ‘That’s exactly the right thing to do.’ She took a step back, about to shut the door but Alison still stood there, hands in pockets, obviously wanting to say something else. ‘Are you really a writer?’ It came out at last.

‘Yes,’ Kate smiled. ‘I am.’

‘And you’re writing about Byron, Dad said.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So, why did you come here?’

‘I wanted somewhere quiet so that I could concentrate on my work.’

‘And you know about history and things.’

Kate nodded. ‘A bit. I studied history at university.’

‘So you know about the Romans.’

‘A bit, as I said. I gather they came here.’

‘And there were people here even before that.’ Alison’s brow wrinkled slightly. ‘The Trinovantes lived in Essex before the Romans came. That’s a Roman grave.’ She nodded her head in the general direction of the beach.

‘A grave?’ Kate frowned. ‘What makes you think that?’

Marcus. The thought had come unbidden and as swiftly it had gone. Marcus Severus’s grave was found in somewhere called Stanway, which, she had seen on the diagrammatic map near his statue, was on the far side of Colchester, some twenty miles away.

‘I just know.’

Kate looked at the girl, disquieted. ‘Alison, when you’ve got some time, would you show me your dig? Show me properly. Explain what you’ve done – the digging looks very professional – and tell me what you’ve found.’

‘You really want to know?’

‘I do. Not to interfere. I’m interested.’

‘OK. Do you want to come now?’

With a moment’s regretful thought about her baked beans and her book Kate nodded. ‘Hold on. I’ll get my jacket and boots.’

The tide had receded a long way when they stood together side by side on the edge of the hollow looking at the excavated side of the dune. The wind was whipping the sand into little eddies which whispered amongst the thin dry grasses and the sun had gone, hidden behind huge threatening clouds. ‘I found some bits of pottery – shards, they’re called, and some metal objects,’ Alison said slowly. ‘They’re at home. I’ll show you when you come to supper if you like.’

‘I would like.’ Kate glanced at the girl. She did not seem to be showing any eagerness to jump down into the hollow. ‘How did you know where to dig?’

‘The sea started it. Half the dune collapsed. Then I began to find things.’

‘What made you think it was a Roman grave?’

‘That’s where you find things. In graves. There was a villa on our neighbour’s farm. It’s under his field, very near us, and there was a Roman road to the village and another to the other side of Redall Bay.’

‘Was there?’ Kate was fascinated. ‘Can we go down into the hollow? It’ll be out of the wind and you can show me exactly how you’ve been sectioning the soil.’

Alison seemed reluctant, but after a moment she jumped down into the soft sand and approached the exposed face where she had been working. ‘I’ve been very careful not to disturb anything. The trouble is the sand just falls away. You can’t stop it. The wind and the sea erode this coast all the time. Even houses fall over the edge a bit further along from here, at Redall Point.’ She raised her hand gently to the sand, and then drew back without touching it. ‘I’ve left my tools in your log shed.’

‘Oh, I wondered who the spade belonged to.’ Kate pushed her hair out of her eyes and reaching into her pocket for her glasses squinted more closely at the surface of the dune in front of her. ‘Look, do you see? Here, and here. There’s a change in texture. The sand is more glutinous. It’s stronger. I think there’s an outcrop of clay and peat of some sort. You may have more luck excavating that. It won’t crumble so easily.’

‘No.’ Alison took a step forward and examined the place Kate was pointing to. Then she shivered. Her headache had returned with a vengeance. ‘It’s too cold to work today. I think I’ll go home now.’ She turned away. As they scrambled out of the hollow into the full force of the wind again Kate saw the girl glance over her shoulder at the spot where they had been standing. There was an unhappy frown on her face as if she had seen something which puzzled her.

It was only after Kate had watched Alison disappear up the track through the woods and had let herself once more into the cottage that she realised that she had not said a word about her own finds. She walked back into the kitchen and looked with regret down at her plate. Then she scraped the congealed mess into the waste bin and put the kettle on. She had wasted enough time already today. Forget Alison Lindsey and her Roman grave. This afternoon she must go back to the world of the cold, bleak Aberdeen lodgings where the young George Gordon was learning the bible, and a lot more besides, at his nurse’s knee.

Her eyes glued to the screen of her lap top Kate did not notice the room growing dark. Her fingers were cramped; her arms stiff and heavy and there was a cold spot somewhere between her shoulder blades which had begun to hurt quite badly. Taking off her glasses, she stretched her hands out in front of her and wriggled her fingers painfully. The fire had died again and the room was icy. Climbing stiffly to her feet she went through the now routine acts of lighting, filling and closing the stove and stood for a moment staring down at the blackened glass of the little doors. She had done it on automatic pilot, her thoughts still with Catherine Gordon and May Grey and their volatile confusing relationships with the boy in their charge, relationships which would leave him scarred for life.

Satisfied at some subconscious level that the fire would now catch and warm her she went back to the table and, sitting down she began to read through the afternoon’s work.

May the gods of all eternity curse you, Marcus Severus, and bring your putrid body and your rotten soul to judgement for what you have done here this day …

She stared at the words blankly. She did not remember writing them. She hadn’t written them. They appeared in the text suddenly, arbitrarily, half way through a description of eighteenth-century Aberdeen.

Pushing her chair back she stood up abruptly, conscious that her hands were shaking. Turning away from the screen she went back to the stove. Opening the doors she knelt in front of it and held out her hands, trying to warm them. It’s just a phrase that’s been whirling round in my head. I must have read it somewhere and it’s somehow lodged in my brain and I typed it out. Idiot. Idiot.

Her eyes went unwillingly to the table drawer. For several minutes she tried to resist the urge to go over to it, then, giving up, she rose and went to switch on the lamp.

Picking up the torc she took it back to the fire and, sitting down on the floor in front of the blaze she turned the piece of metal over and over in her hand. She was no expert, no archaeologist, but she knew enough to be fairly certain that this was a Celtic ornament; almost certainly silver and therefore once the property of a wealthy man; a man not a woman, judging by its weight and size. It was certainly not Roman, whatever Alison thought. So it did not belong to Marcus Severus. Had not belonged, she corrected herself at once. So, whose was it? What was it doing buried in the sand on the edge of Redall Bay? The British tribes who opposed Rome had been Celts. The Celtic world, which today is linked in the popular mind purely to Wales and Scotland and Ireland and Brittany, once covered the whole of Britain – the whole of Europe. East Anglia had been as Celtic as Gwynedd or Galloway. It had been the Saxon invasions that had overridden their traces in folk memory.

She sat back, leaning against the sofa, drawing her knees up, the metal in her hands. It was warm now. The places where she had rubbed and scratched it glinted faintly in the firelight. She closed her eyes. This part of the country – this part of Essex – had been as Alison said the land of the Trinovantes, the tribe who had joined Boudicca and the Iceni in their revolt against Rome. Disillusioned and cheated by their Roman overlords in Colchester, they had not hesitated in rising up against the foreign oppressor. Had this torc belonged to one of them? A highborn Celtic lord? A prince? Was that his burial mound out there on the beach, lashed by the winter sea?

And what had Marcus Severus Secundus to do with him?

The sound of hail rattling against the window made her look up. It had grown quite dark outside. The lamplight reflected in the glass and suddenly the room felt very cold. She glanced at the fire. With the doors open the stove had consumed the logs she had thrown on earlier. Only ash remained. Rising to her feet she put the torc back into its drawer, closed and locked it, then she went to the window and, shading her eyes against the reflection she looked out. The glass was cold against her forehead. Cold and hard. The evening was totally black. Against the rattle of the rain and the howl of the wind she thought she could hear the crash of waves on the beach. With a shudder she stepped back and drew the curtains across. Then for the third time that day she built up the fire.

She awoke in the early hours with a start. Her bedroom was very cold. The wind had risen and she could hear the sea clearly now. The waves crashing on the beach, the rush and rattle of shingle, and from the other side of the cottage – the western side – the thrash and creak of trees.

She peered across the room. She had left the landing light on – a relic of that old fear of the dark – and she could see the outline of the door, the comforting wedge shape of light. For a minute she lay there staring at it, then she reached for the bedside lamp. Propped against the pillows, huddled beneath the blankets with her book and her glasses she felt warm and safe. She half relished the battering of the storm.

A stronger than usual gust of wind flung itself against the window and she heard the groan and rattle of the glass and suddenly she was aware of the smell of wet earth. Bitter sweet, cloying, pervasive, it filled the bedroom. It was the smell of gardens, of newly-dug flower beds, of ancient woodlands.

Groping for her dressing gown she reached for her slippers and padded across the room. Opening the door fully she peered out onto the landing. It was ice cold out there and unbelievably draughty. Frowning she went towards the stairs and looked down.

The front door stood wide open.

For a moment she stood transfixed. It was the wind. It must have been the wind, but the front door was on the sheltered side of the house. She ran down the stairs and threw the door shut. She had bolted it. Surely she had bolted it the night before? Sliding the bolt hard home she turned the key in the lock as well.

The kitchen and the living room doors stood open, the rooms beyond, dark. She glanced at them with sudden misgiving. Supposing it wasn’t the wind that had thrown the door open? Supposing it was a burglar?

Come on, Kennedy. Who would burgle this place? She went to the kitchen door and switched on the light. The room was empty, just as she had left it a few hours earlier, her dishes stacked in the sink, the kettle still – she put her hand on the metal and saw it cloud fractionally beneath her palm – a little warm. Switching it on she turned and went back to the hall. Immediately the smell of earth grew stronger. She paused for a moment, sniffing. The front door was shut and the smell should have lessened, but now it seemed to be coming from the living room.

It was as she put out her hand to the light switch that she realised that there was someone in the room. Her mouth went dry. She held her breath, listening, aware that the other person was doing the same thing, painfully conscious that she was standing silhouetted against the bright light of the hall.

It was a woman.

She wasn’t sure how she knew; she could see no one, but suddenly her terror wasn’t quite so sharp. ‘Alison?’ Her voice sounded ridiculously loud and shrill. ‘Alison, is that you? What are you doing here?’ She found the light switch, clicked it on and stared round, her heart hammering under her ribs. There was no one there. The windows were closed, the curtains drawn as she had left them the night before and the woodburner was glowing quietly in its hearth, nicely banked – this time it would last easily until morning. But if the fire was alight, and the glass behind the door of the stove glowing, why was the room so deadly cold and where was the strange smell coming from? Biting her lip, she stared round again, before going cautiously into the room and looking quickly behind the sofa, behind the chairs, in the corners, even behind the curtains. All was as it should be.

It was a last minute thought to check the drawer where she had put the torc.

The lamp was no longer central on the table. Had she pushed it to one side like that, so it overhung the edge? So that one small push would have sent it toppling to the ground? She put her hand to the handle of the drawer and then drew back. The knob was covered in earth. Wet, rain-soaked earth. Cautiously, with two fingers, she pulled open the drawer. The torc and the piece of pottery were still there. They did not appear to have been touched.

So it was Alison. She had suspected Kate’s theft and come back for her treasure. She probably had a key to the cottage. Hearing Kate moving about upstairs she had lost her nerve and run away. Shaking her head angrily, Kate wiped the handle of the drawer and pushed it closed. She gave one final look around the room and walked to the door.

She was about to switch off the light when she became aware of another scent in the room beyond the smell of the wet earth. It was rich, feminine, musky. The scent a sophisticated woman would wear. She gave a wry smile. Perhaps even rude, boisterous, teenage girls showed signs from time to time of one day growing up.

XII

The decision was made; the sacrifice would be at Beltane. So would the gods be placated at last; the choice of victim to be given to them; he who took the burned bread from the basket would be the one who would die the threefold death.

Nion laughed when he heard. He was young and strong and invincible. And he was in love. His body coursed with the red blood of passion. His skin took fire each time she touched him. His eyes hungered after her body even as she turned to leave him. It was known that one of the elderly druids would take the burnt morsel; one of the old men; one of the fathers, who was ready to go willingly to meet the gods.

The bedroom at the Hyatt Hotel in New York was stiflingly hot. Jon Bevan had woken suddenly, his body bathed in sweat. With a groan he brought his wrist up close to his face and scrutinised the luminous dial of his watch with eyes that felt as though they had been rubbed in hot sand. Four in the morning. Swinging his feet to the carpet he groped his way across the bedroom to the small bathroom and felt for the light switch. The bright white light was blinding. Groaning again he went in and ran the cold tap into the basin, plunging his hands in, sweeping the water over his face and shoulders. It wasn’t cold. In fact it was tepid, but it was better than nothing.

What had woken him? He passed back into the bedroom and turned on the light beside the bed. The heavy double curtains were tightly closed. It was strange how he had got used to Kate’s silly, paranoid need to have the bedroom curtains open at night; now he too felt claustrophobic with them shut. He lifted one corner and peered out but he knew there would be no stars there. His bedroom looked out onto a monstrous, cavernous well, surrounded by other windows, reaching up out of sight towards the heavens. Even when he had tried to crane his neck out while it was still daylight he had not been able to see the sky. He pulled up the window an inch or two. Cold air rushed into the room, and with it the smells and sounds of the city. The blast of a car horn, the distant wail of police sirens, a miasma of indistinguishable music, a shout from somewhere in the dark wall of windows in front of him, and carried on the cold air, rich and spicy and nauseating, the smell of a thousand kitchens cooking steaks and fries, burgers and beans and onions. At four in the morning, for God’s sake! Pulling down the window he sat down on his bed with a groan. Last night’s party at the Café des Artistes had gone on until ten. Then he and Derek had gone on to 44 where they had met up with some other writers. After that he could remember little. They had gone to Peace then on somewhere else he could no longer recall – drinking, talking philosophy which had become increasingly maudlin, composing lines of stupendous prose which they had scribbled on paper napkins and promptly lost and which by tomorrow would be forgotten, and best so. He gave a grimace, embarrassed even to remember it. And tomorrow there would be more of the same. A talk to a group of creative writing students, a signing session at Rizzoli’s, lunch with … who? He shrugged. Who cares. One of Derek’s minions would turn up, usher him around, line him up, make sure his clothes were on straight and his hair brushed, present him on time – a minion who would be intense, humourless, dedicated to the art of not losing an exhausted author in New York.

With an exclamation of disgust Jon threw himself back on the bed and crossed his arms behind his head. He would never sleep now. He groped for the TV remote and pressed it at random. Seconds later he switched it off again. He was not that desperate.

The trouble was, he was missing Kate. He was missing Kate most dreadfully, and the guilt he felt about the way he had treated her had not gone away. The thought made him furious with himself. He had been small-minded, jealous, insecure, unfair. He listed his faults mercilessly. Well, at least now he had a new American contract as good as under his belt and he could begin to pay her back some of the money he owed her. He glanced at his watch again, idly computing what the time was in England. Nine? Ten? Morning anyway. He pulled the phone towards him and began to dial Bill. Somehow he would persuade him to divulge her number. He had to speak to her. He was missing her too much.

XIII

The tide had turned but the wind still piled the sea in against the north-east-facing coasts of Britain. It filled Redall Bay, all but inundating the low-lying islands which were the abode of so many birds. It washed away a huge section of cliff, six metres long, further up the coast near Wrabness, bringing two oak trees which had been clinging desperately to the edge of what had once been a wood crashing to the sand. Rolling up the beach, it flooded into the hollow near the dune, worried at the soil and began to undermine the face of the excavation.

Two of the bodies lay on top of each other, the man face down, his face pressed into the seeping wetness of the clay, his head at an angle, bent against his shoulder. The garotte was embedded deep in the strange desiccated blackness which was all that remained of his skin. He was naked save for the strip of tanned tree bark tied about his arm. It was the bark of the ash; the tree which was his totem; the tree for which he had been named – Nion.

The woman lay across him, hunched, contorted by the agony in which she had died. The fabric of her clothing was strangely intact. In one or two places the colour was still visible, though darkened by the chemical processes of clay and salts and decomposition. And by the blood. Out of sight, beneath her as she lay across the other body was a sword. It was a short sword, but sharp, corroded now to razor thin metal. One of her hands still clasped the hilt. The point was embedded between her ninth and tenth thoracic vertebrae.

XIV

Kate was stacking the dishes in the sink next morning when she happened to glance out of the window and saw Alison appear from the wood. The girl had a fluorescent green haversack over one shoulder and in her hand she carried a large red radio cassette player. Still exhausted and angry after her disturbed night Kate waited for her to approach the cottage, but Alison veered off the path and headed straight towards the shed.

Drying her hands Kate went outside. The storms of the night had passed and the day was bright and crisp with only the lightest wind blowing from the south.

‘Good morning.’ She stopped behind Alison as the girl groped inside the shed.

Alison jumped. She turned, her spade in her hand. ‘Hi.’ She did not look pleased to see her.

‘I thought you might be going to drop in and say hello,’ Kate said.

Alison shrugged. ‘I thought I’d get on.’

‘Fair enough. But first, haven’t you got some explaining to do about last night?’

It had not been easy to sleep after the disturbances. Even with the front door locked and bolted and the lights on throughout the house Kate had only dropped off an hour or so before dawn and then her sleep had been restless and light.

‘Last night?’ Alison turned back to the shed and retrieved a trowel and a broom.

‘It was you who came up to the cottage.’

‘Me?’ She had the girl’s full attention at last. ‘I didn’t come up last night. What on earth would I do that for?’

Kate frowned. The wide eyes looked genuinely puzzled.

‘Someone came to the cottage last night. About three in the morning and let themselves in. They must have had a key.’

‘Weird.’ Alison shook her head. ‘Did they steal anything?’

‘No.’

‘Why did you think it was me? I’m not a thief.’

‘I know.’ Kate tried to lighten the mood by laughing. The sound came out tightly; it betrayed her sudden misgivings. ‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you, because if it wasn’t you, I need to know who it was.’

‘Perhaps it was Greg. He’s probably still got a key.’

‘No, it was a woman. And she had earth on her hands. I thought perhaps you had been digging again.’

‘At three in the morning?’ Alison gave her a withering look. ‘If it was a burglar you’d better tell the police or something. We’ve never had burglars here before.’ The implication in her tone was that Kate had obviously brought the trouble with her. ‘You’d better ring Dad.’

‘Yes, perhaps I’d better.’ Kate frowned. ‘In fact I’ll drop in and see him when I pick up the car. I need to go into Colchester this morning.’

She wasn’t sure when she had decided she needed to go back to the museum. The idea had come so firmly, so ready-formed it was as though she had had it planned all along.

‘He’s not there now. They’ve gone to Ipswich for the day.’

‘Oh.’ Kate felt let down. Ever since she had woken up that morning she had kept a picture of the gentle, reassuring face of Roger Lindsey firmly before her. He would know what to do. ‘Are you going to be all right here by yourself?’ She turned to Alison who was juggling all her tools into her arms with her ghetto blaster.

‘Of course. I always come up here by myself.’ The voice was jaunty, firm. It belied the moment of uncertainty in Alison’s eyes.

The museum was comparatively empty as Kate threaded her way through the Bronze Age and Iron Age exhibits towards the staircase. Over on her left she could hear the video playing to itself. Someone had pressed the button, activating the sequences and then they had left, leaving the sound to echo disembodied around the deserted gallery.

Marcus Severus Secundus stared blankly at the glass cases around him from dead stone eyes. His face was stereotyped – handsome, classic, the hair formally curled. Was there any likeness there, or had the statue been purchased off the sculptor’s shelf by an admirer or a descendent – his son perhaps – to stand in memoriam near his tomb? She stood staring at him for a long time, trying to get behind those blank eyes. Then, gently, aware that she was breaking museum regulations, she raised her hand and ran her fingers across his face, touching the mutilated nose, tracing the line of his cheekbones, his jaw, his shoulder.

The glass case which contained the surviving contents of his grave was close by. She stood and stared down at it with a sense of shock. She had not expected to see bones.

‘In an inhumation, rare at this period, excavated on site B4 at the third Stanway burial mound were found the remains of Marcus Severus Secundus and his wife Augusta Honorata. A survivor of the Boudiccan attack on Colchester in A.D. 60, Marcus Severus was a leader of the rebuilding of the town. In the grave were found symbols of his office, jewellery and small grave goods.’

Kate stared through the glass. The bones lay in heaps, displayed in a plaster replica of the grave. Neither skeleton was complete. Had they died together then, Marcus Severus and his wife? She squatted nearer the case to see better the jewellery which was displayed there. Two rings of gold, a necklace of turquoise and amber, two brooches, one silver, one enamelled and several hairpins. Those must have been hers. And his was the heavy signet ring, mounted beneath a magnifying glass through which she could see the engraving. It showed a rearing horse. And his also, presumably, was the large silver brooch with an intricate design and long embossed pin. Consulting the information cards at the far side of the display she read: ‘Exhibit 4: A curvilinear brooch of native silver, Celtic. Probably dating from the first century B.C. An unusual find in a Roman grave.’ So, what was Marcus Severus of the Roman Legion doing with a Celtic cloak broach? Had he bought it? Or looted it? Or was he given it as a gift?

Leaving the museum at last she turned into the town centre. Having stocked up with fresh food, a couple of films for her camera, a large torch with two spare batteries and after treating herself to a glass of wine and a plateful of fettuccine and salad at a wine bar off the High Street she made her impulse buy – a bottle of silver polish. The weathered silver of the brooch in the glass case had given her the idea. That too must once have been a corroded unrecognisable lump of metal. It was probably wrong to clean the torc herself. She should leave it to the trained restorers at the museum, but if she were gentle, and very careful – she wanted to see if she could achieve that same soft radiance. The torc itself was locked in her car. She had not wanted to leave it in the cottage, giving Alison all day to look for it. Now suddenly she wanted to get back to it, to make sure it was safe.

A cold wintery sunshine flooded across the town as she retraced her steps to the car. To reach it she walked past the theatre and through the surviving arch of the Roman Balkerne Gate. There was a wonderful view of the Roman wall here, as she walked, laden with her parcels, across the footbridge over the scar which was one of the main dual carriageways into town, towards the multi-storey car park.

The drive down the track to Redall Farmhouse was alarmingly slippery. Twice the car slid out of control sideways, where somehow it had clawed its way out this morning. Presumably other cars had made the track worse. She hoped that meant that the Lindseys had changed their minds and come home early, but there was no sign of them when she parked in the barn, transferred the torc from the locked glove compartment to her shoulder bag, unloaded all her shopping and finally changed her shoes for her heavy boots.

It took a long time to walk the half mile or so to the cottage through the mud. Several times she stopped to change arms, and rest with her heavy bags. In the slanting sunshine the wood looked beautiful. Without leaves, the trees were graceful, linear dancers in the wind and there were hidden flowers around her feet; dead nettle and winter heliotrope and speedwell with the occasional small clump of snowdrops tightly furled in bud. The scent of pine and wet vegetation and resin was sharp and exhilarating. It was, she realised suddenly, nothing like the earthy smell which had permeated her cottage the night before.

To her relief the front door was still locked. Letting herself in she dumped her purchases on the kitchen table and went on a careful tour of the place. Nothing had been touched. The hair she had, rather shamefacedly, stuck across the drawer was still there. No one had been in. The more she had thought about it during the day, the more certain she was that Alison had somehow been responsible for last night’s intrusion. Who else could it have been? With a silent apology to her young neighbour in the dune for her suspicions that she would return, she transferred the torc back to its resting place. Only then, cheerful enough to whistle as she worked, did she unload her bags and put on the kettle.

XV

Alison had stood for a long time on the edge of her excavation surveying the damage the wind and tide had wrought on her carefully exposed soil face. The dune had almost broken up. Half the wall she had left the day before had fallen. It lay, a tumble of wet sand and soil in the bottom of the declivity, strewn with tangled seaweed and shells and the rotting half-eaten corpse of a large fish. At the sight of it she pulled a face. Stacking all her equipment on the edge of the hollow she jumped in. She lifted the dead fish out on a spade and hurled it back onto the beach with a shudder. Moments later a screaming gull was circling over it, its claws outstretched for a landing.

She turned back to the shambles before her and stared round. She had already spotted several more pieces of that strange red earthenware lying around in the loose soil and there were other things too. Small round things. Black. ‘Coins!’ Her shriek was echoed by the gull which danced into the air for a moment before returning to gorge itself on the cold white flesh of the fish.

There were thirteen that she could find. Wrapping them carefully in pieces of soft tissue which she had optimistically brought with her for just such a purpose she stowed them in the pocket of her haversack, then she turned back to the dig.

It was the silence she hated. A silence which seemed to block out the gentle constant noise of wind and waves. It was threatening. It entered her aching head like an entity, battering against her brain. She was pretty sure that it had given her the migraines which were the reason for her missing school, but this time she had thought of a way of defeating it; of keeping the headaches at bay. Half an hour later, to the deafening sounds of The Sex Pistols, she was intently sifting through the heaps of sand with her fork and trowel, systematically separating out anything of interest, when she paused, looking down at the patch of dark sand in front of her.

The dagger was half buried still, the hilt and transverse hand-guard badly corroded, but not so badly that it was not instantly recognisable. For a long moment Alison stared down at it without moving, then she dropped to her knees and reverently she began to scrape away the surrounding sand. The dagger was some fifteen inches long, the blade two inches wide at its broadest. She sat for a long time with it in her hands, staring at it, awed, as the voice of Johnny Rotten blasted across the beach, torn by the wind and dissipated across the water. When at last she stood up, she held her trophy awkwardly aloft and she reached for her haversack again.

The blast of ice cold wind took her completely by surprise. Whipping the haversack with its precious cargo out of her hands it flung it down the beach as, blinded by flying sand, she tried desperately to catch it. Her broom fell sideways in front of her and was blown away to end up wedged into the shingle at the end of the dune and her cassette player subsided slowly into the loose soil, where it continued to blast out its music into the roar of the wind before the heavy soil depressed the switches on the top and it fell silent.

The squall had gone almost as soon as it had come. Pushing her hair out of her eyes Alison scrambled out of the hollow and stared up the beach. She could see her haversack, lying in a dayglow heap amongst the tangled seaweed, fifty yards along the tide line. Running to it she caught it to her chest, panting. Then she turned.

Above the dune the sand was still spinning crazily in a whirling spiral which extended about four feet into the air. For several seconds she watched as it spun out of the hollow and away from her down the beach towards the inlet into the bay. Then as swiftly as it had come, it disappeared.

She swallowed nervously. This place was getting to her badly. She forced herself to walk back and stared down at the spot where she had been working so peacefully only five minutes before. All her hard efforts had been undone. The sand was piled randomly once more, her broom and spade lying beneath it. Her trowel had gone. Her cassette player was half-buried and silent, her picnic – two chocolate bars and a can of Coke – had fallen into a pool of sea water.

‘Shit!’

She jumped down into the hole. Salvaging her belongings she heaped them on the edge. Switching on the music again she was comforted to hear it blast forth apparently unharmed. The Cure did a great deal to restore her equilibrium. Tearing the wrapper, thankfully intact and seemingly undissolved, off a chocolate bar she began to eat it.

Two yards to her left, unnoticed and almost invisible in the clay from which it protruded, a human hand, clawed and shrivelled, began, in the cold damp air, the process of disintegration.

Behind her, a faint shadow hovered over her; when at last she looked up and saw it, it was the size and shape of a man.

XVI

Oh, she was beautiful, the mother of his son. He watched her as she lay, propped on her elbow on the far side of the low table picking idly at the figs heaped on the plate before her. Her hair was rich and thick, piled high on her head and held in heavy-plaited coils by four ivory pins. Her skin was creamy, soft; her breasts, heavy, luscious beneath the soft folds of her long tunic. He felt himself tense. They were breasts which had been touched by another man’s hands; another man’s lips. It was strange. The heat of his fury and bitter jealousy was contained utterly by the cloak of ice which had formed inside him. Contained and controlled but not extinguished.

If he had returned to Rome, to the house of his father, would things have been different? Had he been foolish to accept the gift of land in the first colonia in Claudius’s province of Britain? Colonia Claudia Victricensis which had been Camulodunum. He chewed thoughtfully at a dried fig. The land had brought him wealth, respect, honour – the perfect conclusion to an exemplary military career. But his young wife had been dismayed. She had wanted to return to Rome. She and her sister hated Britain. One of the reasons she had wanted so much to go back had been a man. She thought he did not know, but that man had been the reason for Marcus accepting this distant posting in the first place. He smiled grimly.

It was only a few months ago that she had changed her mind about Britain, and at once he had begun to suspect.

Feeling his gaze upon her Claudia looked up at him. Her smile was empty. Cold. A sham. He returned it and he saw doubt in those lovely grey eyes. But only for a moment. She thought she was safe. She thought she was clever. Let her think it. He would bide his time. The moment had to be right. Only her lover would know the real reason for his death, for Marcus could not afford to allow the scandal which would erupt if it became public. Private grief and anger must be contained, must be subservient to the public good. Any flame which might ignite the fire of revolt must be extinguished quietly. There must be no explosion of hate between the native tribes and Rome.

But in private … He breathed deeply, holding his anger in with iron control. In private, in secret, there would be revenge.

And his wife’s punishment, afterwards, would last a lifetime, and then through all eternity.

For a moment Kate had been tempted to make up a thermos of coffee and take it out to the dig to see how things were going but she changed her mind. She had had her morning off. This afternoon, or what was left of it, should be spent in serious work. Besides, Alison would, no doubt, not extend much welcome to any intruders in her private excavation. Perhaps later, Kate would stroll out to the beach for a little fresh air, but not now.

She had worked solidly for about half an hour when the telephone brought her back to the present. Taking off her glasses she went through to the kitchen to answer it.

‘Kate. Hi.’

‘Jon?’ The lift of her spirits, the excitement at the sound of his voice after so long was a purely Pavlovian response she told herself sternly, a conditioning, from living with him and loving him. ‘How did you get my number?’

‘From Bill.’ For a moment he sounded defensive, then meekly he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

She smiled. ‘No. I don’t mind. Of course I don’t mind. How is the tour going?’

‘OK. Nearly over, thank Christ!’ He sounded tired and depressed. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine. Getting a lot of work done.’

‘Is the cottage nice?’

Was he asking out of politeness or did he really care? ‘Yes, it is as a matter of fact. Very nice.’

‘Bill says it’s very isolated.’

‘It is. It’s a good place to work.’ There was a lump in her throat. Suddenly she was missing him so badly it hurt.

‘Good. The money I owe you will soon be on its way, Kate. I’m sorry it’s been so long. Look, I fly to Boston tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll try and ring you from there.’ There was so much he wanted to say, so much he wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t. For some reason he was tongue-tied. He loved her and he had blown it. ‘Take care.’

That was all. He had hung up. She stared at the receiver in her hand, feeling suddenly very, very lonely.

She was too unsettled to go back to work. After only a few minutes’ struggle with her conscience she stood up, threw down her specs and reached for her jacket.

The beach was deserted, side lit in the falling dusk by the last streaks of sunlight from a bruised sun, going down in a haze behind the estuary. Along the tide line the dunlin were busy, probing the sand with their bills. Far out to sea the mist was waiting, hovering on the horizon, for the dark. There was no sign of Alison.

Kate stood staring down into the excavation for a long time. The mess of tossed sand and mud, the tangled weed, the shells, all spelt out the intrusion of the sea into the girl’s vision of a Roman grave. There was no sign now of her meticulous digging and brushing of the sand. The vertical lines caused by the cutting edge of her spade had been replaced by a horizontal stratum, the sand intermingled now by long pale streaks of clay and broader wedges of black, the remnants of the three-thousand-year-old peat bog which had covered the river valley here when the sea was still two miles away. Looking down at the mess Kate shivered. She could see the earthenware, lying abandoned in the trench. Alison had not thought that worth collecting for some reason; nor had she gathered up the piece of metal lying on a tussock of uprooted grasses.

Slipping and sliding Kate scrambled down into the trench herself and picked it up with a frown. It was a dagger.

She turned it over in her hands, looking thoughtfully at the pitted corroded blade. It was ice cold to the touch.

Marcus

It was a whisper in her ear. A sigh on the wind. It was her imagination. Behind her, above the wood, the stars were emerging as the sky grew dark.

Scrambling out of the hollow she turned and began to walk swiftly back towards the cottage, the dagger still held in her hand, point down towards the ground, as though it were still potentially sharp. Which it was.

Indoors she slammed the door against the swiftly coming darkness, locked and bolted it and put the dagger down on the kitchen table, then she reached for the phone.

There was no answer from Redall Farmhouse.

She let it ring for several minutes, then at last she put the receiver down. If Alison wasn’t at the farmhouse, where was she? Thoughtfully she walked into the living room and switched on the table lamp. She had begun to draw the curtains when she glanced at the stove. She couldn’t believe it! It was out. And there were no logs in the box.

‘Damn!’ She stared down at it in dismay. She didn’t want to go out, even to the log shed. She did not want to open the front door again. Suddenly she was shivering and to her astonishment she found she was near to tears.

Idiot. Idiot woman. Missing Jon. Frightened of your own shadow! Come on Kennedy where’s your guts? What would sister Anne think of you if she could see you now? Firmly she put her jacket back on.

In the early dusk she could just see the nearest trees, their trunks glistening from the damp as she turned resolutely towards the shed, the empty box in her arms.

Alison’s tools lay in the doorway higgledy piggledy as though she had thrown them down in a great hurry. Kate groped in her pocket for her new torch and shone the beam into the darkness of the shed. It caught the trowel lying on the ground, just inside the door. She bit her lip. What had made the girl leave so suddenly that she had left possibly her best find yet lying in the grave, and the tools of her trade, at first so neatly put away, thrown haphazardly down?

Better not to think about that. She had probably grown bored on her own. With a half-smile Kate remembered the ghetto blaster. Swiftly she tidied up the tools, then she loaded the box with logs and kindling. Now that it was heavy she could not spare a hand for the torch. Reluctantly she switched it off and pushed it into her pocket. After the bright torchlight the garden seemed very dark, but after all, she could see quite clearly by the light streaming out of the kitchen window.

And the headlights.

She paused, easing the box higher into her arms, watching them coming down the track, jerking up and down as the Land Rover slithered through the woods across the clear grass area and jerked to a stop outside the front door. Invisible in the darkness Kate waited as the door opened and the driver climbed out. He went to the cottage door and pushed it open.

‘Hello?’

To her disappointment the voice was a deep baritone. Not Roger. Greg.

‘Hello.’ Kate had the satisfaction of seeing him jump violently as she came silently round the corner of the cottage, the box in her arms. ‘Good evening.’

‘Christ, you frightened me!’ He looked at her for a moment, then long-ingrained chivalry, drummed into him by his father over the years, prevailed over intentional boorishness as he saw the weight of her load. ‘Here. Let me take that.’

She handed over the box gratefully and preceded him into the cottage. ‘I’ve been in Colchester. The fire’s out, I’m afraid.’ She pushed the front door closed, making sure the latch had engaged, then she went through into the kitchen and drew the curtains, cutting off the cascade of light which shone out onto the grass. The garden sank into darkness.

‘I’ve come up to find Alison. Is she here?’

Kate swung round and stared at him. ‘You mean she’s still not at home? I’ve been to see if she was digging out there, but there’s no sign of her.’

They stared at one another, the hostility which crackled between them suddenly muted. Greg lowered the box to the ground. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure.’

Behind Kate the phone rang from the kitchen. She turned to answer it. Greg followed.

It was Roger. ‘Tell Greg she’s with a friend. Silly child didn’t think to leave a note. Apparently she went up through the woods to the Farnboroughs’. She’s spending the night with them.’

‘I knew she would be OK.’ Greg shook his head in exasperation when she told him. Then he leaned across to the counter and picked up the box of matches lying there. ‘Do you want me to light the fire for you while I’m here?’ His voice was curt, almost as if he were offering against his will.

‘Would you.’ She did not allow herself to sound too grateful. ‘The lighters are over there. I’ll get us a whisky.’

‘All done.’ Greg came back moments later. ‘Good lord, what’s that?’ He had spotted the dagger lying on the table near the coffee pot. Curiously he picked it up and examined it. ‘Where did you find this?’

‘In Alison’s excavation.’

He frowned. ‘I thought she asked you not to touch anything there.’

‘She did, and I had no intention of doing so. This was lying on the ground at the edge as though she’d dropped it. Another tide and it would have been lost.’ She poured the two drinks and pushed one towards him. ‘I told you, I went out to see if she was still there. There’s a terrible mess at the excavation.’

He raised his glass and sipped the whisky, still holding the dagger. ‘I thought she was doing it carefully.’

‘She was. She showed it to me only yesterday. It must have been that storm last night. It’s full of seaweed, and half the side has fallen in. I expect that’s how that came to light.’ She nodded in the direction of the dagger.

Putting down his glass he examined it more closely.

‘Is it Roman do you think?’ He glanced up.

Kate missed the sudden amusement in his eyes. She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think it might be earlier but I’m not an archaeologist. I do think she ought to get some experts here. She could be doing irreparable damage, poking around the way she is.’ She still had not mentioned the torc.

‘The way you describe it the sea will do a lot worse than anything she could do. At least she’s saving a few things this way.’ Greg put the dagger down. ‘You’d better bring it when you come to dinner tomorrow.’

‘I shall.’ She met his eye. For a minute they studied one another, measuring each other up.

‘So. How are you liking Redall Cottage?’ he said at last.

‘Very much. But I’m sorry you had to leave so I could come.’

‘You mean you’d like me to move back in with you?’ He raised an eyebrow suggestively.

‘No.’ She did not flinch. ‘I’m paying for my privacy.’

‘And I’m interrupting it.’ He put down his glass.

‘Not for another thirty minutes. I allow myself the occasional break. Have another?’ Picking up the bottle she gestured towards the glass. He intrigued her. Handsome, boorish, presumably talented, he was something of an enigma.

‘Why not. I can hardly get done for drunk driving in that thing. No one would notice the difference.’

As Kate led the way through into the sitting room he followed her. She poured his whisky then she glanced at him. ‘Someone broke in here last night.’

‘Broke in?’ His expression was bland; politely interested. If he was surprised he didn’t show it.

‘They seemed to be looking for something.’

‘Have you told the police?’

She shook her head. ‘Whoever it was had a key.’ She sat down, cradling her glass on her knee.

‘Oh, I see. You think it was me.’

‘No. It was a woman.’

That did surprise him. ‘You saw her?’

She shrugged. ‘Not quite. But I know it was a woman, and I smelt her perfume. I thought at first it was Alison messing about, but now I’m not so sure. Perhaps it was a friend of hers.’ She paused. ‘Or of yours.’

He did not rise to the remark. ‘Is anything missing?’

‘No. At least, nothing of mine.’ She took a sip from her glass, not looking at him. ‘Did you mean to leave those pictures upstairs?’ she asked after a moment. She sat staring at the wood-burner. The fire inside roared like a wild beast.

Greg raised his foot and kicked the damper across. ‘I did. There’s no more space in the farmhouse. Why, don’t you like them?’ He threw himself down into the chair opposite her. There was a challenge in his eyes.

‘Not much.’

‘Too strong for you, eh?’ He looked puzzled suddenly. ‘Did you mean to imply that one of them is missing?’

‘No, they were all there, I think. And yes, I suppose so,’ she conceded. ‘They are disturbing.’

‘They depict the soul of this place. The cottage. The bay. The land. The sea. The sea will drown all this one day, you know.’

‘So I gather.’ She refused to be rattled by the dramatic declamation. ‘And sooner rather than later if that digging is anything to go by.’

He frowned. ‘It’s strange. None of us knew that was there. Allie found it a while back – the signs of the dune having been dug by men and not just being natural – then only a few weeks ago a great section split off like a ripe rotten fruit and it started spewing out all these bits and pieces.’ His voice was quiet, but his choice of words was deliberate. He had not taken his eyes off her face. ‘It exudes evil, this place. It’s in my paintings. I’m amazed Allie can’t feel it. But she’s an astoundingly insensitive kid. Perhaps it’s because she anaesthetises herself all the time with that noisy crap she calls music.’

Kate smiled. ‘I saw the scarlet machine this morning.’

He was right. She had felt it. The evil. She gave an involuntary shudder and was furious to see that he had noticed. He smiled. Pointedly he put down his glass and, standing up, he went to the stove. Opening the doors he loaded in another log. ‘Do you want me to get in touch with the police about your visitor?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing was taken. I’m sure it was a schoolgirl prank. I’ll bolt the door in future.’

‘And you’re not worried about staying here alone?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t a burglar at all. Perhaps the woman you saw was a ghost. I told you this place was haunted. Haunted and evil. The locals won’t come near it.’

Was that it, then? Was this all a ploy to frighten her away? She laughed. ‘Being a writer of history I’m happy to live with ghosts.’

‘I trust you’re not tempting providence with that remark,’ he said. Throwing himself down in his chair again he crossed his leg, left ankle on right knee and sighed. ‘I used to find it very oppressive here after a while. My paintings would change. They would grow more and more angry. Whilst I am by nature quite a sunny chap.’

She was watching him closely.

‘At the farmhouse I paint differently. With more superficiality,’ he went on thoughtfully. ‘If I ever paint a masterpiece it will be in this cottage.’ For a brief moment it was as though he was talking to himself. He had forgotten she was there; forgotten he was trying to scare her. Remembering her again he glanced at her. ‘Art, it seems, must wait for commerce.’

Straight from the hip. She took it without flinching. ‘Don’t you sell your paintings then?’

‘No.’

The reply, loaded with scorn, was succeeded by a long silence. She did not pursue the subject. Studying his face as he stared morosely into the flames she was conscious suddenly of the lines of weariness around his eyes and the realisation that Greg Lindsey was a very unhappy man. The moment of insight struck her dumb. The silence dragged out uncomfortably as she, too, stared into the flickering fire.

The crash from upstairs brought them both to their feet. ‘Shit! What was that?’ Greg put down his glass.

She swallowed. She had heard a crash like that before and her investigation had found nothing. ‘The wind must have blown the door shut,’ she said at last. ‘I’d better look.’ She did not move. The room seemed suddenly warm and safe. She did not want to climb the stairs.

The noise seemed to have shaken him out of his introspection. He looked at her, noting her white face and anxious eyes and was astonished at his own reaction. He should have been pleased that she was scared but his studied hostility wavered and for a brief second he felt a wave of protectiveness sweep over him. ‘I’ll check.’

Taking the stairs two at a time he went first into the spare room. The room was empty save for her cases and boxes, and his own pictures, standing where he had left them behind the door. He noted briefly that they still faced the wall, then he ducked out of the room and switched on the light in the main bedroom. After the stark businesslike aura of the living room downstairs with its computer and books, the bedroom – his bedroom – shocked him by its unaccustomed femininity. He glanced round. Nothing was out of place. Both doors had been open. Nothing appeared to have fallen – he checked the painting on the wall. One of his, it was uncharacteristically pretty, depicting the bluebells in Redall Wood. He scowled at it. His mother must have brought it over, for it used to hang in the spare room at the farmhouse. Having ascertained that there was no reason for the bang that he could see, his gaze travelled more slowly around the bedroom for the second time, noting her towelling bathrobe, thrown across the bed, her slippers near it, both a bright flame which would suit her rather mousy colouring. He found himself picturing her in the robe for a moment. On the chest of drawers lay a heap of silver bangles – she had been wearing them the day she arrived, he remembered – and next to them a glass filled with winter flowers she must have gathered in the wood. The naturalist in him noted periwinkle, small velvety-red dead nettles and a sprig of daphne she must have found in what was once the cottage garden. Continuing his quick perusal, he studied the small collection of cosmetics. On neither occasion that he had met her so far had she been wearing any makeup at all, but obviously when the occasion demanded she was happy to gild the lily. He turned to the low windowsill where she had put several paperbacks – poetry and social history, he saw. No reader of fiction, this author.

‘Have you found anything?’

Her voice behind him in the doorway made him jump guiltily.

‘Nothing. Both doors were open. Nothing seems to have fallen over. The windows are closed.’

‘Could it have been outside?’

‘The chimney, you mean?’ He smiled. ‘I think we would have noticed if it had fallen through the roof.’

‘What was it then?’ Her voice betrayed her irritation. From the landing she had seen him studying her things. His interest made her feel vulnerable and angry.

‘Perhaps it was the ghost of Marcus. I’ve often heard things here.’ When she did not rise to the remark, he headed back towards the stairs, glancing at his watch. ‘Look, Kate, I should be going back. There’s nothing here. Nothing to worry about. I’ll take a look at the roof as I leave, and get a few more logs in for you. It was probably out in the trees – a branch coming off or something. Acoustics are often unaccountable.’ He descended the stairs ahead of her. ‘If you’re worried, give us a ring and Dad or I will come back and check things for you.’

‘There won’t be any need. I shall be all right.’

Marcus

She shivered at the name which had floated unbidden into her head, watching as Greg pushed his feet into his boots and reached for his jacket. Half of her wanted him to go. He had been perfectly polite, but she could sense his dislike. The other half was afraid. She did not relish the idea of being alone.

Which was crazy. She had rented the cottage for six months and she wasn’t planning to have any lodgers. She had to get used to being alone, and get used to whatever funny noises the countryside had to throw at her. As if to test her resolution the sharp scream of a vixen rang out as he opened the front door. He turned and studied her face. ‘You know what that is, I suppose.’

The bastard! He expected her to be frightened. ‘I know,’ she said. She managed a smile. ‘I’ve lived most of my life in the country, Greg. Because I have, or had,’ she corrected herself as she remembered yet again the full implications concomitant with moving out of Jon’s flat, ‘a London address, it does not make me a townie.’

She thought he had the grace to look slightly shamefaced as, with a bow and a mock touch to his forelock, he headed for the Land Rover. She did not hear his parting comment as he hauled himself behind the wheel: ‘And fuck you too, Lady Muck!’

It was only after she had watched the tail lights disappear into the trees that she realised he had neither given the roof a glance as he left, nor fetched her in the promised extra logs.

‘Bastard.’ She said it out loud this time. She glanced at the log box. There were still a few there but not enough after the blaze he had initiated, for the night. She would have to go out again into the dark.

The torch was sitting where she had left it on the counter in the kitchen. Next to the dagger. She looked at her jacket hanging on the back of the door and she reached a decision. When the fire died she would have a bath – heated by electricity – and she would go to bed. Nothing and no one was going to get her out of the front door again until it was daylight.

With an immense feeling of relief she shot the bolt on the door and walked back into the living room. She made sure the damper was closed – make the wretched thing last as long as possible – put on an Elgar tape – the Enigma Variations – loud – and then she poured herself another whisky.

She had worked for another couple of hours on the book, and was printing up a rough copy for herself when she remembered the silver polish she had stashed away in the cupboard under the sink. Switching off the computer with a sigh of relief she stacked the pages neatly away and went to the drawer. The torc looked greenish-black as she lifted it out and examined it again in the bright kitchen light. Shaking the bottle of polish she smeared some of the mixture cautiously onto the metal and began to rub it gently with the corner of a duster. Ten minutes later she gave up. Her more and more energetic rubbing had had no effect whatsoever. Disappointed, she laid duster and metal on the counter when the phone rang.

‘Hi, Kate.’ Jon’s voice was so strong it sounded as though he was in the next room. ‘I’m in Boston. How is Lord George?’

‘Going well.’ She found she was smiling. ‘What about your tour?’

‘OK. A bit tiring. Nearly over now, thank God. I’m taking five at the hotel. English tea and muffins before I get ready to go out this evening. What are you up to?’

‘I’m cleaning an ancient British torc with modern British silver polish and its having no effect whatsoever.’ Leaning against the counter, the phone comfortably tucked against her ear she turned and surveyed her handiwork.

‘Sounds fun.’ The response from across the Atlantic was muted. ‘May I ask where you got an ancient British torc?’

‘It was lying on the beach.’

‘I see.’ She could tell he didn’t believe her. ‘There isn’t an ancient Briton wearing it, I suppose?’

‘Not at the moment, no.’ She smiled to herself again. ‘You’d love it, here, Jon.’ It was a tentative feeler; a peace offering.

‘The parties are good are they?’ The irony in his tone reminded her that they were no longer supposed to be friends. Or lovers.

So, why had he rung her again?

She knew better than to ask.

‘There’s no one to party with, here. Just the birds and I believe there are seals round in the bay.’

‘And the occasional ancient Brit.’

‘You got it.’ She mimicked what she hoped was an American insouciance. ‘Actually the ghost is Roman.’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘You sounded almost serious,’ Jon said cautiously.

‘Did I?’ She reminded herself how quick he was to pick up nuances; his sensitivity was one of the things she loved – had loved, she corrected herself sharply – about him. It made his actions over the last few weeks harder to bear.

She laughed lightly. ‘How silly. Only joking.’

‘I see.’ He was still thoughtful. ‘You are all right?’

‘Yes. Fine.’

‘OK. Well, enjoy yourself kiddo. I’ll give you a ring in a day or two.’

For the second time he had not given her time to say goodbye. The line had gone dead and she was left staring at the receiver once again. Replacing it slowly she went thoughtfully back to the table and picked up her duster.

The blast of cold air behind her, smelling heavily of wet earth, took her completely by surprise. She whirled round. The front door must have blown open in spite of her care in locking and bolting it. She peered out into the hall. The door was as she had left it. The hall was dark and deserted.

Come on, Kennedy. Either a window has come open or the wind has blown back down the chimney. She found she was whispering to herself as she looked into the warm, dimly-lit living room. There was still a faint glow coming from the stove, though the log box was empty. The room was cooling, but the scent of earth was not coming from there. It was coming from upstairs.

Her bedroom window must be open. She frowned. She had opened it earlier to stare out at the sea, watching the mist drifting in across the still, grey water as night came in from the east. Obviously she had not latched it properly. Her hand on the stair rail she began to climb.

Both doors at the top were open. Both rooms were in darkness. Reaching the top she clicked on the light. The window in her bedroom was shut as she had known in her heart it would be, and the curtains were tightly drawn across. She sniffed. There must be a patch of damp in the house which the rain had activated somehow. Ducking out of the room she peered into the other across the landing. The smell was stronger there and the air was cold. Bitterly cold. The room had a north-facing window, she reminded herself as she went to examine it. It was closed and judging by the cobwebs welded over the catch, had not been opened for a long time.

Slowly she surveyed the walls, looking for the telltale signs of discolouration on the wallpaper. Tiny lemon yellow flowers on brown green stems romped across the uneven walls and between the oak beams without a sign of damp.

Switching off the lights she walked downstairs again, sniffing. The smell was still strong. A sweet, cold smell like a newly-turned flower bed after rain. With a shrug she walked back into the living room and turning over the tape, threw herself down in the armchair nearest the fire.

When she awoke ‘In the South’ had finished, the fire was out and the room was ice cold. Her head ached and for a moment she was too stiff to move. Forcing herself to her feet she groaned and reached for the switch on the table lamp. Turning it off she made her way to the door. A warm bed and a heap of soft pillows to cuddle into, that was what she wanted. In the doorway she turned and surveyed the room before flicking off the light switch on the wall and plunging the room into darkness. It was as she made her way into the bathroom and reached for her toothbrush that she realised she had not had any supper. Two whiskies was not exactly a nutritious way to end the evening. Perhaps that accounted for her splitting headache. She frowned. She was beginning to drink too much. She contemplated getting herself something to eat and realised that she wasn’t hungry. She also realised that she had not switched on the immersion heater so there was not enough hot water for a bath. With a sigh she bent over the basin and splashed some tepid water into her face. All she wanted was sleep. Food and bath could wait until morning. That was one of the joys of living on your own, she recognised suddenly. You could please yourself. Cook or not cook. Wash or not wash. Sleep when you wanted. And just at this moment that was all she wanted.

It was as she put her foot on the bottom step of the staircase that she saw the movement upstairs. She froze, ‘Is there anyone there?’ Her voice sounded thin and frightened in the silence.

There was no answer.

‘Who is it?’ She called again. Her desire for sleep had vanished.

She was answered by the rattle of rain on the windows as a squall of wind hurtled in from the sea.

‘Christ, I’m seeing things now,’ she muttered to herself. Tired eyes. Too much computer, that was the problem. It was the logical explanation but it still took an enormous effort of willpower to force her up the stairs, throwing on all the lights when she reached the top. The place was empty, the windows closed against the storm. She sniffed hard. The scent of wet earth seemed to have disappeared, though when she pushed back the curtains and stared out at the blackness she could see the rain coursing down the panes of glass.

Undressing as fast as she could she slipped between the sheets, leaving the light on the landing switched on against the dark. She lay, wide awake, clutching one of her pillows to her chest, her eyes straining out through the door to the small expanse of wall – painted a dark Suffolk pink and bisected by one pale oak beam – which she could see from the bed. And she listened to the rain.

XVII

‘Are you awake, Sue?’ Alison stared through the darkness of her friend’s bedroom towards the bed by the far wall.

‘Yes.’

They had been whispering and giggling for the last two hours. Twice Sue Farnborough’s mother, Cissy, had come in and shushed them wearily and told them to go to sleep; now she had gone to bed herself and the house was in darkness. For the last twenty minutes or so the silences between the two girls had been growing longer and longer.

‘Do you think I should tell them at home?’

‘About what happened at the grave?’

‘Of course, about what happened at the grave.’

‘No. They’ll interfere. Parents always do. Are you going to go back?’

Alison hesitated for only a second. ‘Of course I’m going to go back. I’m going to finish the excavation.’

‘By yourself?’

‘You could come with me.’ Alison sounded almost eager.

‘No way. That’s not my scene.’ Sue was adamant.

‘Oh, come on. You’d enjoy it. It’s fun.’

‘It doesn’t sound fun to me.’ Sue grinned maliciously in the darkness. ‘You were so scared you nearly wet yourself. You told me as much.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You did. And why else did you come here? Running all the way through the woods instead of staying at home and waiting for your mum to get back from Colchester. You were really chicken.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘You were. Are you going to school tomorrow?’

‘No. I’m still not feeling well.’

‘You’re skiving off, you mean. Well, I’m going, so shut up, Allie. I want to get some sleep.’ Sue reached in the darkness for the headphones of her Walkman and switched on the little machine beneath her pillow. The blast of Sisters of Mercy at full volume in her ears seemed an unlikely lullaby but within minutes she was asleep.

Across the room Alison lay awake, staring towards the curtained windows, listening to the rain. Beneath the borrowed duvet she had begun to shiver again.

XVIII

There was a scattering of wet, sandy earth on the kitchen table. Kate stared at it. The torc lay where she had left it, next to the duster and the jar of silver polish. She touched the soil with her finger. It was wet and cold. She sniffed. The smell was there but very faint now – the smell of a newly-turned garden.

Or a newly dug grave.

She shook her head. She had not slept well. The room had been cold and the noise of the wind and rain lashing the windows had woken her several times from her uneasy, dream-laden sleep. Her head was so heavy she could not even think straight as she walked over to the sink, filled the kettle and switched it on. Perhaps after a cup of coffee she would find an explanation for the mess on the table. There had to be a reason. Earth does not just materialise on a kitchen table. It must have fallen from the beamed ceiling, perhaps released by creeping damp and rain, or it had been swept in on a freak gust of wind under the front door or down the chimney.

She spooned Nescafé into a mug and poured in the water, watching the swirl of brown granules clinging to the blue pottery dissolving as she stirred. It scalded her tongue when she drank but the caffeine shot into her system with gratifying speed. Putting down the mug she picked up the torc and stared at it closely. There was no sign of the effort she had made to clean it. Even the scratches she had made with her nail had disappeared. The metal was as greenish-black and corroded as ever. Wrapping it carefully in the duster she carried it upstairs and through into the spare room. Only one of her suitcases boasted a key. Locking the torc inside it, she pushed it into the corner and, closing the door behind her, she made her way downstairs again. She put the polish away and going to the sink rinsed out a J cloth under the hot tap. It took only a few minutes to wipe up the earth, rinse the cloth again and put it away before she dragged out her boots and jacket and throwing open the front door went outside with her log box. It was a bright sunny morning. High, white, wisped clouds raced across a vivid blue sky from the west and behind the cottage the sea glittered blindingly.

The rain had blown into the shed and many of the logs were soaked. Rummaging in the back she found a few that were dry and carried them indoors. Three times she made the trip back and forth, until there was a satisfactory pile beside the stove. Then she brought in kindling and a final armful of logs to put in the stove itself. Satisfied that she had enough fuel for twenty-four hours at least she stared down at the stove. There was no point in lighting it now. There was one more thing she had to do before she settled down to work for the day. It had been gnawing at the back of her mind since she had cleared up the soil in the kitchen.

Locking the front door behind her she wedged the key into the pocket of her jacket, and pulling on her gloves she headed across the short grass at the back of the cottage towards the beach. A flock of tern rose and wheeled as she appeared on the shingle banks and ran slipping and sliding towards the sand. The beach was wet still from the tide and trailed with weed. A line of shells, white and pink and glabrous in the bright sunlight, marked the line of the high tide. The air was so cold it made her eyes water as she turned right and followed the line of dunes towards Alison’s excavation.

For a long time she stood on the edge staring down into the declivity. Another huge chunk of the dune had broken away and she could now see clearly the different strata in the bright sand. There were pale lines of clay, different shades of sand and gravel and now, clearly visible, a thick black crumbling layer of peat.

There was a strange dryness in her mouth as she half jumped, half slid into the hollow. A spray of bladderwrack lay draped across the bottom of the trench and, half-buried in the sand, something bright red caught her attention as she peered nearer. Frowning, she kicked at the sand fall. Alison’s ghetto blaster lay there beneath a pile of sea weed. Stooping she pulled it free. The ‘on’ button was still depressed. Alison had been back this morning early and had gone again. Putting the machine on the edge of the hollow she stared round. What could have happened to make her abandon her precious cassette player? There was no sign of the girl’s tools, but perhaps they were buried in the latest sand fall. She stepped closer to the face and cautiously she drew off her glove. The peat was soft, layered, compressed. It smelt, when she withdrew her fingers, of wet garden soil. She swallowed hard. ‘Alison?’ Her shout was whipped up by the wind and carried only a few yards before it was dissipated and dissolved. ‘Alison?’ She shouted louder. Scrambling up to the edge of the hollow she put her hand to her eyes against the glare and stared round. The beach was empty.

She turned round. There could be no question of the girl being there, under the sand, but for a moment her imagination was playing the wildest of tricks. She could see where it was soft and loose, where it had fallen, and where, in the bottom of the hollow, a long mound lay compressed beneath the clay. A mound that had the shape of a human grave.